Conflict, Politics and Proselytism: Methodist missionaries in colonial and postcolonial Burma, 1887–1966 9781526118264

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Conflict, politics and proselytism Methodist missionaries in colonial and postcolonial Upper Burma, 1887–1966

MICHAEL D. LEIGH

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general editor John M. MacKenzie

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When the ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series was founded more than twenty-five years ago, emphasis was laid upon the conviction that ‘imperialism as a cultural phenomenon had as significant an effect on the dominant as on the subordinate societies’. With more than eighty books published, this remains the prime concern of the series. Cross-disciplinary work has indeed appeared covering the full spectrum of cultural phenomena, as well as examining aspects of gender and sex, frontiers and law, science and the environment, language and literature, migration and patriotic societies, and much else. Moreover, the series has always wished to present comparative work on European and American imperialism, and particularly welcomes the submission of books in these areas. The fascination with imperialism, in all its aspects, shows no sign of abating, and this series will continue to lead the way in encouraging the widest possible range of studies in the field. ‘Studies in Imperialism’ is fully organic in its development, always seeking to be at the cutting edge, responding to the latest interests of scholars and the needs of this ever-expanding area of scholarship.

Conflict, politics and proselytism

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S E L E CT E D T I T L E S AVAI LAB LE I N T HE SER I ES MATERIALS AND MEDICINE Trade, conquest and therapeutics in the eighteenth century Pratik Chakrabarti EMPIRE AND NATION-BUILDING IN THE CARIBBEAN

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Barbados, 1937–66 Mary Chamberlain MISSIONARIES AND THEIR MEDICINE A Christian modernity for tribal India David Hardiman EUROPEAN EMPIRES AND THE PEOPLE Popular responses to imperialism in France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Italy Edited by John MacKenzie SCOTTISHNESS AND IRISHNESS IN NEW ZEALAND SINCE 1840

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Angela McCarthy

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Conflict, politics and proselytism Downloaded from manchesterhive © Copyright protected It is illegal to copy or distribute this document

METHODIST MISSIONARIES IN COLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL UPPER BURMA,

1887–1966

Michael D. Leigh

MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS Manchester and New York distributed in the United States exclusively by PA LG RA VE M A CM I L L A N

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Copyright © Michael D. Leigh 2011 The right of Michael D. Leigh to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD ROAD, MANCHESTER M13 9NR, UK and ROOM 400, 175 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

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Distributed in the United States exclusively by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 175 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10010, USA Distributed in Canada exclusively by UBC PRESS, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, 2029 WEST MALL, VANCOUVER, BC, CANADA V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN

978 0 7190 8536 9 hardback

First published 2011 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset in Trump Medieval by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

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Dedicated to Jack and Jennie Leigh, whose sacrificial courage illuminated the past, and Harriet Montgomery, whose wit and vivacity lights up the present.

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To men from distant parts who have never been there, it beckons and calls; and once they come they feel fast bound, and cannot leave.

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Burmese Pyo based on Jataka 509, translated by J. Okell

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C ONT E NTS

List of figures — viii List of tables — ix General editor’s introduction — x Acknowledgements — xiii Note — xiv List of abbreviations — xv Map — xvi 1

Introduction

1

2

Missionaries

20

3

Politics

40

4

Social issues

61

5

Religion

74

6

Schools

92

7

Evacuation and exile

110

8

Japanese occupation

128

9

National traumas

136

10

Mission politics

155

11

Final act

174

12

Retrospect

189 Glossary — 201 Appendix — 205 Bibliography — 208 Index — 223

[ vii ]

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FIGURES

1

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2

3

4

5

6

7 8

9 10 11 12 13 14

British Chief Commissioner in Pakokku, c. 1890. © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes: SOAS/MMS/ Box 629 Synod, 1889. © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes, SOAS/MMS/ Box 629 Synod, 1911. © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes, SOAS/MMS/ Box 629 Tennis players, 1898. © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes, SOAS/MMS/ Box 629 Synod, 1932. © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes: SOAS/MMS/ MRP Burma Box 6C (Folder 18) Early Wesleyan school buildings. © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes: SOAS/MMS/ Box 629 Air raid on Mandalay, 3 April 1942. © British Library Board: Shelf mark V22318. Wesley Church Mandalay. © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes: SOAS/MMS/ MRP/Box 6C (Folder 18) General Aung San, 27 June 1947. © Getty Images Burmese Civil War, 9 April 1949. © Getty Images U Nu, April 1955. © Getty Images General Ne Win, January 1966. © Getty Images Synod, 1964. Group of Methodists in Mandalay, 2003.

6

26

30

41

48

93

117 138

142 145 149 175 183 193

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T AB L E S

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1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Religious affiliation in Myanmar, 2007 Comparative Methodist Church membership figures, 1920–39 Pupils in Wesleyan schools in Upper Burma, 1917 Upper Myanmar Conference: total Methodist community, 2000–5 Expansion and division of the Tahan District, 1964–2002 Numerical returns, Mandalay District, 2006 Mandalay District, circuits and societies, 2007

10 78 95 191 192 193 194

[ ix ]

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G E NE R AL E DIT OR ’S IN TRO D U CTIO N

The relationship between missionaries and European imperialism is complex and much debated. In many respects, the history of missions seems deeply embedded in the record of imperial rule in Africa, Asia and elsewhere. Yet the establishment of missions often occurred before the arrival of direct colonial control. They also survived its ending, continuing to operate in decolonised societies. Moreover, many missions were founded beyond the reach of imperial administrations. Here, China is perhaps the prime example. But if there is a chronological problem, there is also an interpretative and qualitative one. Some scholars have seen missions as a vital auxiliary to imperial rule – even if missionaries did not always see themselves in this role. They disseminated cultural and social norms as a central part of the proselytisation process. They offered medical and educational services that were often of great value to developing colonial regimes. They invariably knew that they were in the business of supplying people who were sufficiently acculturated and educated to fill significant sectors of employment in the colonial state. These ‘mimic men’ (and women) often filled what in the West might be termed lower-middle-class positions in clerical work, lower-level teaching, nursing, and minor supervisory roles in commercial and transport concerns in the Westernised parts of the local economies. Other scholars have pointed to the fact that missionaries were seldom slavish supporters of imperial policies and norms. Often critical, they distanced themselves from imperial administrations and colonial populations of European origin, whether in the ‘dependent colonies’ or in territories of settlement (which in some parts of Africa overlapped, as in Kenya, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland – Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi – and other parts of southern Africa). If missionaries were ambivalent, so too were administrations who often found missions to be problematic in sometimes disrupting the supervision of indigenous peoples. Settlers seldom liked missionaries, seeing them as giving ‘natives’ ideas above their station and causing problems for white-settler dominance. Moreover, missions had direct lines to the metropolitan power, where reports were sent to their respective societies, information was fed to a missionary or even a more general press, and where visiting missionaries travelled to give lectures and stir up controversies when they deemed them to be necessary either to their interests or to their views on the ethnical manner in which imperial [x]

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G EN ERA L ED I TO R’ S I N T R O D U C T IO N

power should be exercised. They even became involved in nationalist developments in the twentieth century, often lending their support to nationalists (whom they had frequently educated) in attempting to overturn the imperial state. In short, this was seldom an easy or straightforward relationship. All of these issues thread their way through this book, but it has several claims to originality. The first is that it is dealing with Burma, now known as Myanmar, a country which has received very little attention from missionary historians. The second is that it considers the Methodists who have, perhaps, received less attention than the missionaries of other denominations, and no attention at all in the case of Burma. Mike Leigh has family connections with his subject, but this has in no way coloured the approach he takes to this missionary history. On the contrary, his work and analyses are fundamentally based on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, and the author takes a balanced judgement of the missionaries who received a ‘call’ to travel and work in this in some ways unlikely missionary field in Asia. It was unlikely both because of the strength of Buddhism in that country and because here was a society which enjoyed both the carapace of an ancient culture and a degree of remoteness that rendered both physical and cultural penetration rather difficult. Yet Methodist missionaries, whether we see them as brave or as foolhardy, headed for Burma from the late nineteenth century (in this case after the British had established their authority in Upper Burma) and remained there for some years after independence. They went to a country where the climate was often hostile and disease rife. They endured hostility as well as many privations. And they also found much social and political turbulence, not to mention the massive disruptions of the baleful combination of economic problems, Japanese invasion and occupation, and nationalist power struggles. Yet, as well as mission stations, they sought to provide Western education and medical services where they thought they were necessary. Through all of this many conducted themselves with great devotion and bravery, while still often inhibiting their activities by ‘in-fighting’ and personal rivalries, not least in such key areas as the establishment of a ‘native ministry’. The conversions they achieved (from their own point of view) were less likely to occur among the majority Buddhist population. They tended to work most successfully amongst the hill peoples who were geographically, socially and economically marginal to Burmese society. It is perhaps indicative that Christianity continued to expand even after the missionary withdrawal (or expulsion). Hill peoples today often mark out their distinct ethnicity through adherence to Christianity, and the contemporary military dictatorship continues to persecute [ xi ]

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G EN ERA L ED I TO R’ S IN T R O D U C T IO N

them. This cannot of course be placed at the door of the missions. It is clear that such hill peoples themselves freely embraced an alternative world religion and continue to do so as a badge of their difference and their opposition to the harsh rule of some elements of the majority. Anyone wishing to understand these phenomena should read this book. It offers background to these events which Leigh unveils in both a moving and a critical manner. Whatever we may think of the extent to which missionaries may have been deluded, the evidence of this book illustrates the extraordinary tenacity and courage through which they sought to achieve their objectives. John M. MacKenzie

[ xii ]

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A C K NOWL E DGEMEN TS

I am deeply grateful to Professor Ian Brown for his constant friendship, support, good humour, wisdom, scholarship and encouragement. My thanks also go to Mr Lance Martin, Archivist in Special Collections at SOAS, for his long-suffering patience and extraordinary understanding of documentary complexities. My sisters, Doreen Hayhurst and Margaret McInnes, reacquainted me with Burma in the first place. Professor John Sidel, Dr Rachel Harrison, Dr Justin Watkins and many others at SOAS fired my academic interest in Southeast Asia. I also wish to thank two remarkable young mentors and friends, Maung Josh Set Paing Htet and Dr Tharaphi Than. They have taught me so much. I am grateful to many friends in Myanmar for their steadfastness and guidance – not least Rev. Zaw Win Aung, U Paw Tun, Rev.Moe Moe Ei, U Khin Maung Myint, Daw Khin San Myint, Ma Su Myat Mon, Rev. Chit Ngwe, U Soe Hla, U Myo Nyunt, Rev. Myo Min Htwe, Dr Khin Maung Than, Dr Than Bil Luia, Daw Mya Mya Ohn and the late U Tin Maung Htwe. Mike King and Joy Fisher at Methodist Church House and several former Burma missionaries, especially Rev. Ted Bishop, Rev. Ivan Homer, the late Rev.William Holden and the late Mrs Margaret Cowell, have kindly kept me on the straight and narrow. Philip Storey produced the excellent map and David Smith of Indent Services has provided technical expertise. I am deeply grateful to Brigadier U Aung Myo (Director General of the National Archives in Yangon) and his colleague, Ma Saw Nan New, for their exquisite courtesy and kindness. Patrick Stevens and his staff in Special Collections at Cornell University Library were extremely helpful. Most of all I must thank my wife, Julie, without whom none of this could have happened. The cover image and figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 are reproduced by kind permission of the Methodist Church. Figure 13 is reproduced by kind permission of Rev. Edward Bishop. Despite every reasonable effort, it has not been possible to trace the originator of this photograph. Information or enquiries should be addressed to the author. Figure 7 is reproduced by kind permission of the British Library Board. Figures 9, 10, 11 and 12 are reproduced by kind permission of Getty Images.

[ xiii ]

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NOTE

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Terms such as ‘chairman’ and ‘native’ have been retained in the text for the purposes of accurate historical reportage because they were in general use before 1966. This does not imply that the author either approves or would normally use these terms.

[ xiv ]

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A B B R E V IA TIO N S

ABM ABSU AFPFL AV BCMS BCP B&FBS BIA BMS BOC BSPP CAS(B) CMS GCBA GCSS ICS IFC KMT KNC KNDO KNLA LMS MMS NLD PECDO PVO RAF SAC SLORC SPCK SPDC SPG WMMS WW YMBA YMCA YTCM

American Baptist Mission All Burma Students’ Union Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League Anglo Vernacular (School) Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society Burma Communist Party (the White Flags) British and Foreign Bible Society Burma Independence Army Baptist Missionary Society Burmah Oil Corporation Burma Socialist Programme Party Civil Affairs Service (Burma) Church Missionary Society General Council of Burmese/Buddhist Associations General Council of the Sangha Sammeggi Indian Civil Service Irrawaddy Flotilla Company Kuomintang Kachin National Congress Karen National Defence Organisation Karen National Liberation Army London Missionary Society Methodist Missionary Society National League for Democracy People’s Economic and Cultural Development Organisation (Kachin State) People’s Volunteer Organisation Royal Air Force Security and Administrative Committee State Law and Order Restoration Council Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge State Peace and Development Council Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society Women’s Work (Methodist missionaries) Young Men’s Buddhist Association Young Men’s Christian Association Yunnan Tibetan Christian Mission [ xv ]

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C O N FLI C T, PO LI TI C S AN D P R O S E L Y T IS M

Map:

Methodist missionaries in Upper Burma, 1887–1966

[ xvi ]

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1

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Introduction

In colonial times, the term ‘Upper Burma’ referred imprecisely to the broad plains that straddled the confluence of the Irrawaddy and Chindwin Rivers. Like the phrases ‘North of England’ and ‘American West’, Upper Burma implied more than a geographical location. It evoked visions of wide open spaces, sturdy provincialism, ancient customs, hazy pastures and hints of danger. The events described in this book took place mainly in the ancient Buddhist-Burman towns of Mandalay, Pakokku, Monywa, Kyaukse, Pyawbwe and Chauk. Eventually the focus shifts to the valleys and mountains of the Upper Chindwin, and less frequently to Maymyo, Kalaw and the Shan Hills beyond. The first British Methodist missionaries came to Upper Burma in 1887 and the last left in 1966. They were known as ‘Wesleyans’ before 1932 and afterwards as ‘Methodists’.1 In 1887 Burma was a new British colony. It became Independent in 1948 and was a burgeoning military dictatorship by 1966. World War II ripped through the middle, drawing jagged lines between colonial rule and sovereign state. For decades past the British Army had nibbled away at Burma on the pretext of protecting India’s north-east frontier. Exploitation and the lure of profit were more likely motives. When British troops finally attacked Mandalay in 1885 the Burmese monarchy collapsed like a pack of cards. A ragbag of colonial civil servants, businessmen, lawyers, bankers, prospectors, forestry officials and ne’er-do-wells flocked in behind the army.2 The early Wesleyan missionaries were among those early colonial camp-followers. Of course they had come to convert ‘heathens’, not to seek fortunes or to wield power. They were swept along by religious enthusiasm, imperialistic patriotism and British military technology. Many a missionary ambition had been fired by stirring hymns in the old Methodist Hymn Book – hymns with imperialistic undertones that conflated patriotic duty with Christian devotion. The words conjured [1]

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images of ‘alien lands afar’. They spun romantic yarns about heathens brandishing ‘reeking tube and iron shard’ and Englishmen wrestling with ‘the lion’s gory mane’ or Union Jacks fluttering ‘over pine and palm’. Young boys bellowed out martial tunes in cold Wesleyan Sunday Schoolrooms and dreamed of the day they would march off to serve God and Empire. In 1887 one former scholar arrived in Mandalay as Wesleyan chaplain to the British expeditionary force, while others became Methodist missionaries in Upper Burma and contrived to serve both King and Church in times of imperial crisis.3 Sir Harry Johnston envisaged mission stations as ‘essays in colonisation’ and Stephen Neill described missionaries as ‘instruments of Western infiltration’. When Jean and John Comaroff linked Christian missions with European colonisation they were accused of breathing new life into the ‘corpse of the missionary as imperialist’. Susan Thorne discovered the familiar ‘colonial practices’ of wage differentials and discriminatory rules at the very heart of missionary activity. It prompts questions about Wesleyan mission stations in Upper Burma. Were they also essays in colonisation? Certainly the missionaries acted out microcosmic dramas against the backdrop of colonial politics and imperial wars.4 Between the point of British Empire and counter-point of Burmese nationalism, four factions jostled for position. Seventy-seven Methodist missionaries occupy centre stage in this account. For eighty years they wrote weekly dispatches describing life, politics and events. However, they were participants as well as chroniclers. Sometimes they ruffled feathers and sometimes poured oil on troubled waters. They had gone to win thousands of souls but celebrated paltry gains as if they were mighty victories. It was enough to detonate angry Buddhist reactions. Colonial society was the second faction. The British authorities wielded huge power at first but lost it spectacularly before the end. Missionaries and colonial officials became uneasy bedfellows and both were baffled by the third constituency, ‘Old Burma’. It was obscured in mists of ancient custom and Buddhist religion. However, it was the fourth group that stole the show. ‘New Burma’ bristled with political ambition. It emerged as nemesis. After World War II had reduced Burma to ruins it opposed British power and challenged Christian missions. Its victories were bittersweet, for neo-colonialism stalked Burma long after Independence in 1948. Upper Burma crackled most uncomfortably when the four factions clashed in discord. The British Empire was one side of an equation and Burma was the other. Collisions between the two were frequent and explosive. [2]

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I N TRO D U C T IO N

Although the earlier Wesleyan missionaries were implicated in the cut and thrust of petty colonialism, they neither understood nor could influence the nuances of imperial strategy. The geopolitics and macroeconomics of the British Empire washed over their heads and are not particularly relevant to this account.5 More significant was the global reach of Protestantism. It became the soul and moral foundation of the British Empire. Churchmen regarded empire as a providential means by which Christianity would sweep the world.6 Protestants in Britain and America financed the thousands of missionaries who set out to evangelise the colonies. Many Americans believed the job could be completed within a generation.7 Christianity became the ‘prism through which all knowledge of the world was refracted’ and biblical concepts of race and colour ‘othered’ entire colonial populations. Protestant ideologies blurred the hard edge of colonial power and redefined empire as ‘a trust’. It was, they said, a national responsibility to be exercised for the benefit of subject peoples. Missionary societies built hospitals, clinics and schools as practical expressions of their Christian love, although critics dismissed them as instruments of cultural domination.8 Henry Venn, the impeccably evangelical Secretary of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), was the most distinguished and inspiring of nineteenth-century mission administrators. In 1865 he formulated a radical ideology based on the premise that Western missions were transitional phenomena. Venn saw beyond the current scramble for converts to a day when European and American mission stations would be replaced by ‘self-supporting, self-governing and self-extending’ native churches. For the time being, however, he warned missionaries that they must distance themselves from colonial governments or risk being branded as imperial agents.9 Venn’s civilising agenda was short-lived and by 1900 his brand of political pragmatism and notions of the Christian nation had been superseded by a new wave of evangelicals. They cherished ethereal visions of ‘individual selfhood’ in which it was impossible to make spiritual distinctions between unregenerate duchesses at home and south-sea heathens abroad.10 E.P. Thompson dismissed this new breed of ‘redemptive evangelicals’ as ‘religious terrorists’, while moral philosophers accused them of egregiously demolishing indigenous belief systems and assuming that everyone else should believe what they believed.11 John Wesley is sometimes hailed as the progenitor of Protestant imperialism. He affirmed the Arminian doctrines of ‘justification by faith’ and ‘universal redemption’ and insisted that salvation was open to [3]

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everyone regardless of race or social class.12 Wesley described Calvinist ideas of predestination and election as stumbling blocks to the spread of the Gospel. His spiritual odyssey led in unexpected socio-political directions. None was more startling than Élie Halévy’s assertion in 1906 that England had avoided revolution only because Wesleyans had espoused democracy, liberty and order. Bernard Semmel went further, claiming that Methodists had succeeded in channelling the dangerous enthusiasms of the English working classes into ‘the non-political and remote task of foreign missions’.13 Semmel’s hypothesis perplexed many Methodists.14 Some complained that missionaries lived more like colonial district officers than evangelists, and others that the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (WMMS) was an autonomous fiefdom in its prestigious Bishopsgate Street headquarters.15 Under the Society’s wing Richmond College trained missionaries and Mrs Wiseman imperiously led the Women’s Work (WW).16 The General Missionary Committee (inaugurated in 1885) boasted a colonial membership of 48,748 Wesleyans and presided over half the world.17 By the 1890s Wesleyanism was coterminous with Gladstonian liberalism. However, the unlikely duo of Rev. Dr Hugh Price Hughes and Sir R.W. Perks MP (‘Imperial Perks’) lured many Wesleyan Liberals into the imperialist lobby.18 Hugh Price Hughes wrote a weekly column in the Methodist Times which had a readership of 150,000. His pet theme was that the British Empire was making the world safe for Wesleyanism. By 1900 Wesleyans rode the crest of a ‘tidal wave of race patriotism’, and every ‘Methodist minister of distinction’ was said to share Hugh Price Hughes’s imperialist convictions.19 Although Wesleyan imperialism in Britain melted away after the death of Price Hughes in 1902, it remained the sine qua non for missionaries in Upper Burma for years to come.20 They willingly made ‘peace with colonial domination in order to make war on heathenism’.21 The pioneering Rev. Ripley Winston boasted that the Empire guaranteed Burmans ‘the liberty of British subjects’. His memoirs sported jingoistic aphorisms including one promising that ‘where Britain’s power is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too’.22 Attitudes changed during the 1920s when the historians George Findlay and W.W. Holdsworth revived the liberal argument that imperial powers had freely trampled over humanity until Wesley came along to restrain them and to assure downtrodden peoples that they were equal before God, regardless of their race or colour.23 Like the Imperial Civil Service, Wesleyan missions were uniformly structured from one end of the Empire to the other. The central organisation was the Connexion. Local churches were societies which [4]

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I N TRO D U C T IO N

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were grouped into circuits then into districts. District chairmen were Wesleyan equivalents of Anglican bishops and they presided over district synods.24 At the turn of the twentieth century Burma was full of surprises. Burmans were masters of evasion. For centuries they had ignored rather than confronted coercive rule, but they met their match in 1885. Efficient new colonial officers routinely rounded up and punished fugitives from the law. In an atmosphere laden with suspicion and fear, ordinary Burmans were unable to distinguish between austere Wesleyan missionaries and haughty colonial officials. Robert Taylor once likened students of Burmese history to blind men diagnosing ‘the heart and brain of a pachyderm by feeling around its skin’.25 Burma was mysterious, inaccessible and ethnically diverse. For centuries it lay hidden from the gaze of Europeans, tucked away between India to the west and China to the east.26 Young Wesleyan missionaries arriving after 1887 were as bemused as anyone else by its complexities. They expected to find primitive peoples thirsty for knowledge of Christianity. Instead they encountered sullen, streetwise communities, and quaint beliefs jostling with sophisticated religious philosophies. It was difficult to gloat when male literacy was higher than in Britain.27 Theravada Buddhism was ubiquitous. It was rooted in everyday life and enshrined in elegant texts. Each morning households in Upper Burmese town and village succoured long columns of yellow-robed pongyis (monks). Weber once described Buddhism as ‘anti-political’ because it had no political theory, ignored caste and evolved no civil law. It was not the case in Burma where Buddhism had infiltrated every echelon of politics and society from king down to street urchin. Buddhism and state-politics converged most conspicuously in the powerful personage of the thathanabaing. He was head of the Sangha and responsible for ecclesiastical discipline.28 Buddhist society was multifaceted and what you saw was not necessarily what you got. It flourished vibrantly in busy urban streets and bazaars, but also deep in distant forests. In the Lower Chindwin, for example, communities of lay-Buddhist monks – politicians of regionalism – planned religious reforms and dreamed of a resurgent society. The Aranyavasi were ascetic recluses, while the Gamavasi worked among ordinary people in teeming towns and villages. They taught reading, writing, dancing and martial arts and in the past had reluctantly collected taxes for the kings. Then, as now, the Sangha was fiercely independent and resisted external interference.29 The secular equivalents of monks were myo-thugyi and ywa-thugyi. [5]

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1

A ‘Boy’s Own’ empire. The British Chief Commissioner, Sir Charles Crosthwaite, inspecting Chin tribesmen in Pakokku, c. 1890.

These stalwarts of provincial governance in ‘middle Burma’ had survived the departure of the monarchy. They regulated everyday life and linked the ‘central state and its subjects’.30 In Monywa during the 1960s, John Badgley discovered the durability of this traditional society. One family had ‘produced [local] leaders for the past three centuries’, the grandfather of another had been ‘the wealthiest man in our township’, another was ‘the third generation of his family to live here’. The ancestor of yet another had been ‘an officer in the King’s army and had been awarded land near the village for his service’.31 The British public was fascinated by Burma, imagining it as an ‘intangible’ corner of a ‘Boy’s Own’ empire (figure 1). Colonial historians fed this popular interest with prurient misrepresentations of Burma’s past.32 The Times published scores of articles between 1893 and 1906 highlighting commercial opportunities and sensationalising bizarre ‘native’ behaviour.33 In these early days of colonial rule ordinary Burmans could neither celebrate nor mourn their history. Later liberal historians attempted to redress the balance, but later Burmese nationalist historians launched frontal attacks on Western distortions. Daw Ni Ni reinterpreted the Anglo-Burmese wars as assaults on Burmese [6]

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I N TRO D U C T IO N

national identity, and the scholarly Thant Myint-U exposed the duplicity of British officials and ‘Rangoon-based commercial interests’.34 Scores of mission histories and missionary yarns were written between the 1850s and 1950s.35 They are not widely read today, for most are propagandist and many over-romanticise their heroes. More recently scholars have devoted much energy to bridging the gulfs separating imperial, ecclesiastical and local histories.36 Andrew Walls explained that they were reconciling two strands of mission historiography – one that localised the vision of the Church and the other that universalised it.37 Similar characteristics cropped up in every mission between Shanghai and Timbuktu, and Norman Etherington identified characteristics common to all. The list includes a chronic lack of converts, the way missionaries blamed unresponsive ‘natives’ for their failures, the impossibility of cracking religions with ‘universal creeds’ and ‘sacred written texts’, the indifference of colonial governments and the relative ease with which missionaries converted people at the margins of society.38 Individual mission histories seemed less relevant as former colonies were indigenised and as Western society became more secularised. It seemed as if the guns, like those in Singapore in 1942, were in the right place but pointing the wrong way.39 Andrew Porter sensed that the universalising trend might empty the baby with the bathwater, so he urged scholars to restrict their researches to ‘smaller and smaller localities’.40 Encouragement for ‘the local’ came from another, entirely unexpected source as well. In his searing epitaph to anonymity in medieval Europe, Carlo Ginsburg lamented that ‘about Menocchio we know many things, [but] about this Marcato, or Marco and so many others like him, who lived and died without leaving a trace, we know nothing’. Similarly many Burmese native subalterns and missionary-heroes lie forgotten in dusty archives waiting to be rediscovered – compelling this particular history to be written.41 Three writers revolutionised mission historiography during the 1990s. Susan Thorne’s history of Congregational missions pitchforks readers straight into the vagaries of Victorian metropolitan society where the British working classes were as imperialist as ‘Oxbridgeeducated outfitters of the colonial service’ and nonconformistmissionaries shaped imperialistic ideas. Thorne describes how they cloaked the language of empire in morality and religiosity and confused working-class shortcomings with ‘racial diseases’. Metropolitan congregations were encouraged to imagine heathens at home and heathens in the colonies as entirely different species, and working classes in Britain were pitted against subject races in the Empire. Thorne describes how, in the colonies themselves, missionaries occupied a no-man’s land [7]

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between colonial middle classes and imperial gentry. They alienated both, by waging battles of conscience and by transgressing unwritten segregationist rules. At the same time they happily accepted protection from imperial coercive forces.42 John and Jean Comaroff’s study of nonconformist missions among the South African Tswana peoples was not concerned with religious change per se, but with the colonisation of microcosms of daily life. Here, ‘mission colonialism’ kept converts quiet, and subdued the ‘forces of savagery, otherness and unreason’. Missionaries reconstructed Tswana history and values and mimicked secular political colonisation by transforming society rather than simply ruling people. The Comaroffs refused to treat historical figures in their accounts as symbols of cultural structures and social forces, but as real people who could speak straight from the political record in their own words about their own intentions and imaginings.43 Thorne and the Comaroffs remind us that all missionary activity is political, that missionaries are power brokers and that missions were subversive agencies implicated on all sides of the colonial equation. They scrutinised mission stations in the same way that auditors examined secular organisations. In their wake one is bound to ask whether Methodist missionaries in Upper Burma were more or less imperialist and political than were missionaries elsewhere. A decade later Jeffery Cox, David Hardiman, Aylmer Shorter, Pamela Welch and Richard Price launched a second revolution. Using techniques of socio-cultural enquiry, they drew universal conclusions from specific studies. Building on the methodologies of Thorne and the Comaroffs they brought missiology into the mainstream of cultural studies.44 Indeed, Tony Hopkins and Bernard Porter feared they might have sidelined ‘core’ imperial causalities such as international rivalry, trade and finance. Andrew Porter was prompted to surmise that only ‘the ambitious and foolhardy’ would now publish single-volume interpretive histories.45 Cox’s arguments are refreshingly contrarian. He challenges the antiimperialist critique of many modernist historians, maintaining that missionaries were as likely to moderate colonial excesses as they were to promote them. He rejects the view that missions depended on white patriarchs for success, suggesting instead that the consent of indigenous populations was far more important. In the same vein he argues that in local mission stations, policies were shaped by women missionaries and local catechists, and that their promotion of non-Western church governance distanced missions from other imperial agencies. Interestingly, Cox highlights the missionary predilection for property development, pointing out that mission stations, schools, [8]

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hospitals, orphanages, clinics and churches spread like rashes across the Empire. Sophisticated mission buildings may have signified a determination to establish settled communities and effect cultural change, but they also housed complex organisations. Medical, administrative and educational facilities had to be run and maintained by wellqualified expatriate staffs. Their salaries, housing, travel, subsistence, pensions and school fees totted up to significant amounts that were far beyond the means of indigenous congregations to sustain. In this sense, mission buildings perpetuated cultures of imperial dependence and retarded, rather than encouraged, the development of autonomous ‘local’ churches.46 Cox’s views are endorsed by David Hardiman’s study of medical missions in the Punjab and by Aylmer Shorter’s observation that unsympathetic white communities impoverished African converts. In her study of colonial Zimbabwe, Pamela Welch shows how the unwillingness of local white congregations to help African missions perpetuated colonial practices. Indeed Southern Africa was a mission-minefield, scarred with funding gaps and entrenched colonial practices. Richard Price explains that ‘racial essentialism’ led missionaries to regard cultural subordination as the prerequisite for salvation.47 The early Wesleyan missionaries in Upper Burma were less racist than Southern Africa counterparts, but they were reluctant to criticise colonial authority and slow to embrace local church autonomy. They were far too poor to adopt colonial lifestyles, but like missionaries elsewhere they were obsessive builders. However, the most important feature of the missionaries in Upper Burma was that from the outset they came under attack from sophisticated nationalist opponents. Political ambition, military conflict and secular agency stood in the way of significant evangelical advance. Their altercations were rarely theological in nature. Politics of proselytism rather than religious differences lay behind most battles with secular and Buddhist leaders in Upper Burma.48 Today, Baptists, Roman Catholics and Anglicans in Myanmar far outnumber Methodists.49 Current statistics are extremely unreliable but Table 1 provides a rough estimate of current comparative membership figures. Six factors explain the disparity. First, the Wesleyan missionaries arrived later than their ‘rivals’ thus missing the golden age of foreign agency. Missionaries of other denominations enjoyed British military protection for the half-century before 1885 without having to face significant Burmese nationalist opposition. Roman Catholic priests had been active in Burma since the sixteenth century and their missions spread systematically during the nineteenth [9]

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Table 1

Religious affiliation in Myanmar, 2007 Approximate numbersa

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Religious groups Buddhists Muslims Others (Confucians, Taoists etc.) Hindus Baptists Animists Roman Catholics Anglicans Presbyterians Methodists

42,505,510 1,910,360 966,000 483,000 650,293 478,000 477,590 62,000 29,500 28,491

Note: a Accurate statistics are unavailable and sources disagree. Sources: World Council of Churches; CIA World Factbook; International Freedom Report, US Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, 2007; Jan Lahmeyer, Populstat.Info.; Timothy Gall, Worldmark Encyclopedia of Culture, vol. 3, Cleveland, Eastwood Publications; Upper Myanmar Methodist Conference Office.

and twentieth centuries. Adoniram and Anne Judson of the American Baptist Mission (ABM) arrived in 1813. They worked mainly among the Karen people, although in 1877 Dr Rose opened an ABM mission station in Mandalay. It was still occupied when the Wesleyans arrived. Anglican missionaries of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) established the Diocese of Rangoon in 1877 and King Mindon provided them with a church and a school in Mandalay. Although Thibaw later expelled the Anglicans, they had returned to Mandalay by 1887. Rev. James Mills Thoburn of the American Episcopal Methodist Mission began work in Rangoon in 1879. Meanwhile the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Mission and the Anglican Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society (BCMS) were active among hill peoples in Upper Burma and the Shan States.50 Second, Burmans suspected that all British missionaries were complicit with the Colonial Government whereas American and Roman Catholic missionaries could easily distance themselves. On the other hand successive governors treated SPG missionaries as confidants and Methodists as outsiders. Third, rigid sacramental and creedal disciplines kept Burmese Roman Catholic converts in tow. Methodist rules, on the other hand, were no antidote to backsliding. Hard-won converts who had ‘ceased to meet’ were merely struck off membership lists. Fourth, every Christian denomination found difficulty in proselytising adherents of universal creeds like Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and [ 10 ]

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Buddhism. By contrast spirit-worshippers, animists and primitive deists converted in their tens of thousands.51 Until 1945 Wesleyan Methodism worked exclusively among Burmese Buddhists. It was an unproductive strategy that resulted in few converts. Conversely the American Baptist Mission concentrated on non-Buddhist Karens, Kachins and Chins whom they baptised in large numbers. Fifth, the Wesleyans were less well resourced than their main ‘rivals’ who seemed more able to recruit pastors, teachers and nurses for their missions, schools and leper homes. The Baptists had wealthy American benefactors like the Colgate family, while the Roman Catholics could tap into vast supplies of priests and nuns. The sixth reason became apparent in the 1960s when barriers descended on the Christian Churches. They were no longer free to proselytise new converts. Size mattered more than ever before. Churches were well placed if they had already built up substantial memberships and struggled if they had not. The Methodist Church had relatively few members. Baptist and Roman Catholic missions had many more, and survived relatively easily. Missionaries were front-line combatants not formulators of church policy and, as John Keegan reminds us, battles are won by soldiers fighting on the ground not by the rightness or wrongness of the war.52 The missionaries were also representatives of Western values in foreign parts. Their genetic make-up really mattered – who they were and what they thought. Early nonconformist missionaries tended to be lower-middle-class provincials, the sons of northern coal-merchants and engine drivers.53 They were once described as a ‘nest of consecrated cobblers’. The Wesleyan grandee Ebenezer Jenkins was archetypical. A cabinetmaker, then teacher, he was ordained a minister and served in India before becoming the WMMS Secretary. Most other denominational societies recruited more professionals and fewer artisans in due course, but not so the Wesleyans. They considered pious Christian parentage more important than university degrees. No doubt some Wesleyans were lured into missionary work for reasons of financial reward, denominational rivalry or cultural imperialism, but most had virtuous motives such as honour, heavenly reward, pity, love and duty.54 The CMS trained its missionaries at a specialist college in Islington where they learned practical skills such as elementary tropical medicine, carpentry and shoemaking and were taught about Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and sociology. The early Wesleyan leaders regarded theological colleges as elitist. Their missionaries were just ‘plain preachers’ trained on the job.55 After 1843, however, most (but not all) Wesleyan missionaries attended Richmond College which received [ 11 ]

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some funding from the East India Company. It also cherished quaint ‘missionary’ traditions, although native languages, comparative religions and tropical medicine were not taught. In 1970 Rev. J.M. Young could not recall having learned anything of practical use while at Richmond College. In his day, all students were educated in the same way and to the same level, in accordance with Wesleyan egalitarian principles.56 It is easy to ridicule these strait-laced Wesleyan missionaries. Porter alludes to their hypocrisy but at the same time acknowledges their readiness to sympathise with ‘native’ ambitions and nationalist aspirations.57 The Comaroffs, less generously, accused nonconformist missionaries of being ‘ineffectual in the realpolitik of empire’, of working for political change one moment, being ‘cultural brokers’ the next and ending up as the errand boys of British propaganda.58 Thorne was more specific but equally cutting. She accused Wesleyans of aping the muscularity of evangelical Anglicans, and derided their inability to act without the prior consent of the Connexion.59 Notwithstanding such criticism, the Wesleyan missionaries were generally decent, honest, industrious men and women who took their work extremely seriously. While Anglicans fought their battles for the Gospel on the playing fields of Eton, Wesleyans fought theirs on windswept northern municipal recreation grounds. Those who had been employed before entering the ministry were assistant teachers, railway engineers, draughtsmen, shop assistants, clerks, bank cashiers and printers. Only six of the seventy-seven were university graduates. Few were ‘political priests’ and fewer still were willing to challenge the excesses of Colonial Government.60 Artificial patterns should not be superimposed on the chaos of Upper Burma’s past. Nevertheless the historian needs promontories by which to navigate through humdrum stretches of everyday life. In this story there are four key promontories. Each represents a moment of profound realisation.61 In 1920 Rev. Arthur Sheldon sensed that Burma was at a watershed. Defeat and trauma lay behind, unrest and danger loomed ahead. Sheldon warned of a wind ‘moving over the surface of events’ which would shake the foundations ‘of cherished institutions’.62 In March 1942 Japanese forces advanced on Mandalay and in his last letter home Rev. Clement Chapman mused that the national agitation of the last few years now centred ‘on the Japanese forcing us out’.63 In March 1950 when Burma was gripped by civil war, a senior Methodist in London suggested that it was punishment for treachery during World War II. Rev. Denis Reed retorted angrily that Burma was victim not villain.64 Finally, in May 1963 General Ne Win declared that [ 12 ]

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‘no foreigner can ever be a friend of Burma’. The suggestion stung Rev. Stanley Vincent who repeated the phrase in hurt disbelief.65 So the curtain rises on a cast of helpless players in global conflicts and lead actors in small dramas of their own making. British missionaries, colonial officials, Burmese Christians, Buddhists nationalists, Chins, Lushais, Khongsais, Indian street-sweepers, even Japanese soldiers, were all victims of circumstance, and all deserve our respectful attention. The script has been pieced together from hundreds of unpublished documents. It is adventure yarn, morality tale, tragicomedy and saga of courage and human frailty rolled into one. The plot is defined by a series of crises that scoured out the political landscape of Burma. The finale features the Methodist Church in Upper Burma today as it teeters on the political frontline and in the midst of social conflict. Against the odds, it survives.

Notes 1 2

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Methodist Union took place in 1932. Census of Burma 1911, Government Printing, Rangoon, 1912, p. 82, 11,828 British subjects were recorded, 1,891 resident in Mandalay. Some faces could be attached to statistics in the 1927 Who’s Who in Burma (Rangoon, Indo-Burma Publishing Agency). Methodist Hymn Book, London, Methodist Conference Office, 1933, especially the ‘Church Militant and Triumphant’ section (nos. 816–832 and 878–900), e.g. ‘The Son of God goes forth to war’, ‘Forth rode the knights of old’ and ‘Lord of our farflung battle line’; they were written by Victorian hymn writers like Charles Edward Oakley, Reginald Heber, Rudyard Kipling, George Duffield and Frances Ridley Havergal. Many were omitted from the later Hymns and Psalms, 1983. Rev. Joseph H. Bateson was that first army chaplain (1887–88). Chapman, Young, Shepherd, Leigh, Holden, Hawtin, Acheson and Silcock served in army units between 1914 and 1945. Roland Oliver, Sir Harry Johnston and the Scramble for Africa, London, Chatto & Windus, 1957, p. 182. Johnston (1858–1927) was colonial administrator, social Darwinist and admirer of missionaries. See also S. Neill, Colonialism and Christian Missions, London, Lutterworth, 1966, p. 11; Norman Etherington (ed.), Missions and Empire, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 4, note 8; J. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1991, vol. 1, p. 11; S. Thorne, Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth-Century England, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1999, p. 11, and T. Ranger, ‘White Presence and Power in Africa’, Journal of African History, 20 (1979), 463–469. Arguments about imperial strategy are rehearsed in J.A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study, London, Constable, 1905; R. Hilferding, Finance Capital: A Study of the Latest Phase of Capitalist Development, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981 (translation of Das Finanzkapital, Vienna, 1910). He described the Empire as a safety-valve for the ‘malaise of industrial capitalism’. The boom in chartered colonial companies and colonial stocks at the end of the century is charted by M.W. Thomas (ed), A Survey of English Economic History, London, Blackie, 1957, p. 449. See also A. Porter, ‘The Balance Sheet of Empire, 1850–1914’, Historical Journal, 31:1 (1988), 685–699, who calculated that Britain had derived no gross

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profit from Empire; W.R. Louis, Imperialism: The Robinson and Gallagher Controversy, New York, New Viewpoints, 1976; J.R. Gallagher and R. Robinson, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’, Economic History Review, NS 6:1 (1953), 1–15; D.K. Fieldhouse, Economics and Empire, 1830–1914, London, Macmillan, 1984; D.K. Fieldhouse, Colonialism 1870–1945: An Introduction, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981; and D.K. Fieldhouse, The Colonial Empires: A Comparative Survey from the Eighteenth Century, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1982. Ranger, ‘White Presence’, 463–464; A. Porter, ‘An Overview 1700–1914’, in Missions and Empire, ed. N. Etherington, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. 40; Brian Stanley (ed.), Missions and the End of Empire, Grand Rapids, MI, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003, Introduction, pp. 4 and 30. S. Maughan, ‘Mighty England Do Good: Support of Foreign Missions by English Denominational Organisations’, in Missionary Encounters: Sources and Issues, R.A. Bickers and R. Seton ed., Richmond, Curzon Press, 1996, p. 30, estimates that in 1900 there were 154 missionary societies in Britain. British churches donated £1.6m to foreign missions in 1899; Americans donated $14m in 1890. Also, Amory H. Bradford, ‘The Missionary Outlook’, The Biblical World, 13:2 (1899), 79. The list included SPCK (founded 1698), SPG (1701), Moravians (1732–50) and Quakers in America; BMS (1792), LMS (1794); Glasgow and Edinburgh Societies (1796); CMS (1799); William Carey’s Particular Baptist Society (1792); the Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Society (1802), which became ABM in 1814; and the American Methodist Episcopal Church Missionary Society (1819) which became the Foreign Mission Board of Managers in 1906. Porter estimates there were 10,000 missionaries in 1900. Stanley estimates 17,254 Protestant missionaries in 1899 – 9,014 from Britain and Ireland and 4,159 from the USA. D.B. Barrett estimates 273,700 from all denominations by 1989. Andrew Walls, ‘British Missions’, in Missionary Ideologies in the Imperialist Era, 1880–1920, T. Christiansen and W.R. Hutchinson, ed., Århus, Aros, 1982, states that CMS alone sent out 1,478 missionaries between 1880 and 1906. Rev. Also J.S. Dennis, Christian Missions and Social Progress: A Sociological Study of Foreign Missions, Edinburgh, Olivant Anderson & Ferrier, 1897. Small Christian sects and organisations joined this ‘crusade’ between 1890 and 1917, such as the Bible Christians (Philippines), United Brethren (West Indies), Bremen Mission (West Africa), Jehovah’s Witnesses and Primitive Methodists (South Africa), Maryknoll Sisters (Hong Kong), Cowley Fathers and English Presbyterian Mission (China), Basel Missionaries, Mennonites and Carmelites (India). P.A. Varg, ‘Motives in Protestant Missions, 1890–1917’, Church History, 23:1 (1954), 68–82; R. Miles, Racism, London, Routledge, 1989, p. 16; Ania Loomba, Colonialism and Postcolonialism, London, Routledge, 1998, p. 90; Brian Stanley, The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Leicester, Apollos, 1990, pp. 47–52. A. Porter, Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2004, pp. 164– 169. Rev. Dr Rashdall, ‘The Motive of Modern Missionary Work’, American Journal of Theology, 11:3 (1907), 369. See Clifford Manshardt, ‘What will Succeed Religious Imperialism?’, Journal of Religion, 12:4 (1932), 526, and Robert Schuyler, ‘The Rise of Anti-Imperialism in England’, Political Science Quarterly, 37:3 (1922); J.L. Barton, ‘The Modern Missionary’, Harvard Theological Review, 8:1 (1915). And see Ryan Dunch, ‘Beyond Cultural Imperialism: Cultural Theory, Christian Missions, and Global Modernity’, History and Theory, 41:3 (2002), 301; Porter, Religion versus Empire?, pp. 229–245; D.W. Bebbington, ‘Atonement, Sin and Empire, 1880–1914’, in The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions, 1880–1914, ed. A. Porter, Grand Rapids, MI, Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003; Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith, London, Orbis, 1996, pp. 79–84; E.P. Thompson (incidentally, the son of a Methodist missionary in India), The Making of the English Working Class, London, Gollancz, 1968, p. 402.

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Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609), Professor of Theology, Leiden University, opposed Calvinism. Élie Halévy, ‘La Naissance du methodisme en Angleterre’, Révue de Paris, 1 and 15 August 1906: to Halévy, Methodism was ‘the antidote to Jacobinism’; Bernard Semmel, Methodist Revolution, London, Heinemann, 1974; S. Piggin, ‘Halévy Revisited: The Origins of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society: An Examination of Semmel’s Thesis’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 9:1 (1980), 17. Lord Soper complained that ‘the spiritual welfare of the heathen across the seas became the prime concern of many Methodists who were unready to face the problems of the unfortunate heathen in the back streets of Leeds’ (Books and Bookmen, 17 November 1974, p. 14). See F.R. Barry, Times Literary Supplement, 20 December. 1974, p. 1447, and K.S. Inglis, Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963, p. 70. see also N.A. Birtwhistle, ‘Methodist Missions’, in A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, vol. 3, ed., R.E. Davies, A.R. George and E.G. Rupp, London, Epworth Press, 1983. Dr Coke, Superintendent of Missions, discouraged Wesleyans from contributing to ‘Calvinistic societies’ such as BMS, and by 1844 the Connexion had invested £1,784,530 in missionary work. WMMS was established in 1813. Mrs Hoole, wife of Dr Elijah Hoole, was Foreign-Correspondent. Between 1876 and 1912 under Mrs Wiseman, widow of Rev. Luke Wiseman, WW funds increased from £2,500 to £23,000 per annum. WW was established in 1858 and renamed Ladies Auxiliary. In 1885 there were missions in the Gold Coast, Ivory Coast, India, the Caribbean, Rhodesia, Hupeh and Hunan Districts of China and Ceylon (the Burma Mission had not yet started). In 1902 it was reported to Conference that there were 482,906 full members in Great Britain and Ireland. Overseas membership had grown most spectacularly in the Gold Coast from 1838 to 1890 due to the efforts of Thomas Birch Freeman. See J. Kent, ‘Hugh Price Hughes and the Nonconformist Conscience’, in Essays in Modern Church History, ed., G.V. Bennett and J.D. Walsh, London, Adam & Charles Black, 1966, p. 200. Wesleyans were originally Peelite Conservatives; they joined the Liberal Party because of W.E. Gladstone’s high moral tone. See S. Koss, ‘Wesleyanism and Empire’, Historical Journal, 18:1 (1975), 105–118. Gladstone retired in 1894 and Wesleyans liked none of the candidates to succeed him – John Morley, Sir William Harcourt and Lord Rosebery (racing enthusiast and married to a Rothschild heiress). Hughes was President of Conference, 1898), and Perks was described by Beatrice Webb as ‘a repulsive being, hard, pushing and commonplace’. See Beatrice Webb, Our Partnership, ed. B. Drake and M. Cole, London, Longmans Green, 1948, pp. 231–232. Methodist Times, 12 October 1899; exceptions were a handful of Wesleyan trade unionists, W.M. Crook, Editor of the Northern Echo, and Dr Henry Lunn, an outspoken critic of lifestyles of Wesleyan missionaries in India. See Dr H.S. Lunn, The Inner History of the Wesleyan Missionary Controversy, London, Review of the Churches, 1889. Koss, ‘Wesleyanism and Empire’, 110–118. The Methodist Times of 7 December 1899 quoted William McArthur, Wesleyan Liberal MP for St Austell, as saying, ‘Imperialism without Liberalism is jingoism, but . . . Liberalism without Imperialism is Parochialism.’ Seventeen of the imperialist MPs were Liberals and seven were Conservatives. Eighteen of the twenty-four Methodist MPs elected in the 1900 general election were imperialists. K.E. Fields, ‘Christian Missionaries as Anti-colonial Militants’, Theory and Society, 11:1 (1982), 95. W.R. Winston, Four Years in Upper Burma, London, C.H. Kelly, 1892, pp. 7–8. G.G. Findlay and W.W. Holdsworth, History of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, London, Epworth Press, 1921–24, vol. 1, pp. 24–32; Moravians in Germany

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led this ‘religious awakening’. The West African slave trade and the ‘spoliation’ of India were cited as examples of abuses. See The Constitutional Practice and Discipline of the Methodist Church, Peterborough, Methodist Publishing House, 1997. Circuits were under superintendent ministers and quarterly meetings. District business was conducted in synods. The Methodist Conference was responsible for connexional policies, doctrines and disciplines. The President of Conference was elected annually. Methodist ministers were full-time, stipendiary and itinerant – moving from circuit to circuit every few years. They could be stationed anywhere in the Connexion. Local preachers were unpaid, unordained and preached only in their home circuits. Membership was of a society not the Connexion. New members remained on trial until completing instruction. Every member met in a class led by a senior lay member of the society for weekly spiritual conversation. Robert H. Taylor, ‘Finding the Political in Myanmar, a.k.a. Burma’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 39:2 (2008), 219–220. See Shelby Tucker, Burma: The Curse of Independence, Pluto Press, London, 1988, p. 13. The estimates were ‘politically vexed’. The last complete census in 1931 dubiously classified all Burmese-speaking Buddhists living in Burma-proper as Burmans. The total indigenous population was 12.6m. William J. Koenig (‘The Early Kon-baung Polity 1752–1819: A Study of Politics, Administration and Social Organisation in Burma’, unpublished PhD dissertation, London University, 1978) estimated a population of 2–2.5m in the mid-eighteenth century. Recent official estimates state that 20 per cent of the population is from ethnic minorities. See Gustaaf Houtman, Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy, Tokyo, Tokyo University for Foreign Studies, 1999; for example, the tension between Ana (power) and Awza (influence). Charney estimates the literacy rate at 50 per cent in the nineteenth century; Crawfurd estimated it at 90 per cent in 1827. The Sangha operated under the vinaya (monastic rules) and the dhammathat (Buddhist Law). M.W. Charney, Powerful Learning: Buddhist Literati and the Throne in Burma’s Last Dynasty, 1752–1885, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2006, pp. 29–58. The Aranyavasi were wealthy agriculturalists and estate managers who meditated and wrote commentaries on Buddhist texts. Gamavasi sub-sects included pwe-gyaung or ‘hat-wearing monks’, and fortune-telling, tattooing, boat-racing, wrestling and drum-beating monks, as well as monks who handled corpses. Buddhists could acquire merit by copying religious texts. J.S. Furnivall, Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India, New York, New York University Press, 1956, p. 17. Myo-thugyi (hereditary heads of townships) and ywa-thugyi (village headmen) gathered taxes and organised labour services. Robert H. Taylor (The State in Burma, London, C. Hurst & Co., 1987, p. 14) points out that below them were ahmudan and athi – bondmen and freemen – police-chiefs and King’s agents in the countryside, and above them were myo-wun and ahkin wun – provincial administrators and revenue officers. John H. Badgley, Politics among the Burmans: A Study of Intermediary Leaders, Athens, Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1970, pp. 60–65. See Jeffrey Richards, ‘Boy’s Own Empire’, in Imperialism and Popular Culture, ed. John M. MacKenzie, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1986, pp. 141–164. Among the chief historian-propagandists were Sir Arthur Phayre, History of Burma (1883), Sir Charles Crosthwaite, The Pacification of Burma, London, Frank Cass & Co. (1912) and G.E. Harvey, British Rule in Burma, London, Faber & Faber, 1946 (see pp. 16–21). Harvey was the most blatant of the historians; he spoke of ‘slimy elements’ led by a ‘nasty little nonentity’ who placed Thibaw on the throne. Burmans were accused of starting three Anglo-Burmese Wars – the Second because of the King’s refusal to repay ‘a £750 debt’ to the Bombay Burma Trading Corporation and the Third because French diplomats pushed Thibaw into demanding another loan.

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Articles abounded about head-hunters and tribal rites. Court circulars featured Lord Curzon, Lord Elgin and the Prince of Wales, ecclesiastical and legal appointments, law cases and police reports. Crimes against Europeans (e.g. the murder of Mr Tucker by dacoits) received prominence, as did business news, financial reports on rice production, oil wells, ruby mines, rubber and cotton-growing, trans-frontier trade and Burma Railways. See Frank N. Trager, Burma, from Kingdom to Republic: A Historical and Political Analysis, London, Pall Mall Press, 1966, pp. 34–38. Other later liberal historians included Hall, Cady and Woodman. See Ni Ni Myint, Burma’s Struggle Against British Imperialism (1885–1895), Rangoon, The Universities Press, 1983, p. 157; and Thant Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 136–141. Thant Myint-U highlights the political manoeuvrings of Sir Albert Fytche, the British Residency in Mandalay and British agents who clandestinely armed tribal warlords. There are over 300 works (including 44 biographies of David Livingstone alone); also biographies of Eric Liddell, Hudson Taylor, Samuel Pollard, Gladys Aylward, F.C. Bridgman, Ernest Wright, Johann Adam Schall von Bell SJ, Peter Parker, Karl Ludvig Reichelt, Samuel Dyer and William Milne, in China, William Carey in India, Samuel Broadbent, William Threlfall, T.L. Hodgson, Daniel Lindley and John Moffatt in South Africa, Alfred Tucker and Bishop Hannington in Uganda, Thomas Birch Freeman in the Gold Coast, Mary Slessor in Calabar, Father Alexander Rhodes in Vietnam, Bishop J.S. Hill in Equatorial Africa, Hester Needham in Sumatra, John Taylor in East Africa, John Mackenzie in Bechuanaland, Dan Crawford and Rev. William Affleck in Central Africa, Bishop Robert Gray in Capetown, Dr Isabel Mitchell in Manchuria, John Williams and William Ellis in the South Sea Islands, Rev. J.P. de Pinto in Ceylon, Edward John Thompson, Hannah Dudley, Padre Wyld and Arthur Parker in India, and Thomas Coke and William Moister in the West Indies. See Porter, Religion versus Empire?, pp. 4–7. Neill, Etherington and Stanley were prominent among those who sought to universalise the nature of missionary work. Walls, Missionary Movement in Christian History, pp. 53–54. Etherington (ed.), Missions and Empire, pp. 4–13. Walls, Missionary Movement in Christian History, p. 148. Porter, Religion versus Empire?, p. 316, and B.S. Cohn, An Anthropologist among the Historians and other Essays, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 41. C. Ginsburg, The Cheese and the Worms: Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980, p. 128. Thorne, Congregational Missions, pp. 11–170. Thorne suggests missionaries encouraged cultural racism and working-class imperialism – and enticed the labouring poor in Britain back into church. They enlisted nonconformist businessmen like Morley, Salt, Baines, Crossley and Spicer. Comaroff and Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, pp. 5–12 and 217–304. Theoretically missions espoused democracy, prosperity, morality and equality but in practice they promulgated inequality, coercion and dispossession. Missionaries were alleged to intimidate communities and restructure minds, watering ‘moral wastes’ and building ‘phantasmic English country villages’. Their slogan was ‘instruction, veneration, surveillance’. Missionary science defeated ‘rain magic’. They mastered native languages to eavesdrop on secrets; Christian names replaced old identities, and young natives collaborated in order to get colonial jobs. African political elites had to choose between ‘mission colonialism’, ‘state colonialism’ and ‘settler colonialism’. John Philip and Robert Moffat of the London Missionary Society (LMS) disagreed with each other politically, and a Methodist missionary, Rev. Ludorf, supported workers against Boer bosses. Andrew Porter, ‘Evangelical Visions and Colonial Realities’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 38:1 (2010), 145–155; Jeffery Cox, The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700, New York, Routledge, 2009, and Imperial Faultlines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India 1818–1940, Stanford, CA, Stanford

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University Press, 2002; Pamela Welch, Church and Settler in Colonial Zimbabwe: A Study in the History of the History of the Anglican Diocese of Mashonaland/ Southern Rhodesia 1890–1925, Leiden, Brill, 2008. Porter (‘Evangelical Visions’) is rather dubious about the claim that Martin Ballard has written ‘the first general history of modern missionaries to Africa set within the wider social and political context’ (Martin Ballard, White Man’s God: Extraordinary Story of Missionaries in Africa, Westport, CT, Greenwood World, 2008). He is less critical of Bengt Sundkler and Christopher Steed’s, A History of the Church in Africa, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000. See also Peter Cain and Tony Hopkins, British Imperialism 1688–2000, London, Pearson Education, 2002; Bernard Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society and Culture in Britain, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006. See Cox, British Missionary Enterprise, pp. 196–240. David Hardiman, Missionaries and their Medicine: A Christian Modernity for Tribal India, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2008; Aylmer Shorter, African Recruits and Missionary Conscripts: White Fathers and the Great War, 1914–22, London, Missionaries of Africa, 2007; Welch, Church and Settler, pp. 194–208; Richard Price, Making Empire: Colonial Encounters and the Creation of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth Century Africa, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008. See Rowan Strong, Anglicanism and the British Empire 1700–1850, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Childe, Meeting, 5 August 1963: 410,000 of the 470,000 Protestants in Burma were Baptists (90 per cent of Myanmar’s population of 52.4m was Buddhist and 5 per cent was Christian). Father D.M. Griffini’s account is the earliest (Della Vita di Monsignor Gio.Maria Percato, Udine, Fratelli Gallici, 1781). In 1833 Father Sangermano published The Burmese Empire, and Father Paul Ambrose Bigandet published his history in 1887 (An Outline of the History of the Catholic Burmese Mission from the Year 1720 to 1857, Bangkok, White Orchid Press, 1996). More than fourteen biographical studies of Adoniram Judson were published between 1823 and 2005. The Judson bubble was burst by Helen Trager’s Burma through Alien Eyes: Missionary Views of the Burmese in the Nineteenth Century, London, Asia Publishing House, 1966. George West, Dr John Ebenezer Marks SPG (Forty Years in Burma, London, Hutchinson & Co., 1917), W.R. Winston of WMMS (Four Years in Upper Burma) and Julius Smith of the American Episcopal Methodist Mission (Ten Years in Burma, Cincinnati, Jennings & Pye, 1910) wrote their memoirs. Rev. A.T. Houghton published an account of the Bible Churchmen’s Mission (Dense Jungle Green, London, BCMS, 1937). Others were Herman G. Tegenfeldt’s history of the Kachin Baptist Church in 1974 (A Century of Growth, South Pasadena, William Carey Library, 1974) and Father Edward Fischer’s history of the Columban Fathers (Mission in Burma: The Columbian Fathers’ Forty-Three Years in Kachin Country, New York, Seabury Press, 1980). More recently histories have been written by L.H. Sakhong, In Search of Chin Identity: A Study in Religion, Politics and Ethnic Identity in Burma, Copenhagen, NIAS, 2003, and Za tawn Eng, The Impact of Christian Mission Work on the Hualngo People’s Music and Culture in Myanmar, Cambridge, Anglia Polytechnic University Press, 1999. They focus on non-Burman peoples. For example, Prophet Harris and Rev. William Platt in West Africa met with phenomenal successes, as did missionaries working among the Mizos and Nagas of north-eastern India. In each case the indigenous peoples followed primal religious practices, and their response to Christianity is sometimes explained by the similarities of their world-views of a spirit god. Peoples who were ‘uncontaminated’ by evangelistic contacts with other universalising religions were fertile ground. J. Keegan, The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme, London, Penguin, 1976, p. 16. Methodist missionaries found themselves on the frontline during discontent in 1919, uprisings in 1930, nationalist student strikes in 1939 and the Japanese invasion of 1942.

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R.S. Neale, Class and Ideology in the Nineteenth Century, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, pp. 15–40. ‘Potential professionals’ were aspiring middle classes. S. Piggin, Making Evangelical Missionaries, 1789–1858: The Social Background, Motives and Training of British Protestant Missionaries to India, Abingdon, Sutton Courtenay Press, 1984, pp. 54–61 and pp. 128–131. Piggin cites William Bankhead of LMS, Joseph Fletcher of WMMS and Henry Baker of CMS, and quotes David Bogue (Gosport Theological Academy) who called missionary work a ‘Crown of Glory’. See also K.E. Knorr, British Colonial Theories 1570–1850, London, Cass, 1963, p. 381, who notes that missionaries had salaries, free children’s education, pensions and free sea passages. A. Hodge, ‘The Training of Missionaries for Africa: The Church Missionary Society’s Training College at Islington, 1900–1915’, Journal of Religion in Africa, 4:2 (1971–72), pp. 81–96. Islington began in 1825. Students attended the General Northern Hospital. Piggin cites John Kilner who trained in a Colchester circuit for service in Bombay. In 1833 proposals for a ministerial training seminary under the presidency of Jabez Bunting were rejected. Everett (a Methodist pamphleteer) ridiculed it as ‘Bunting College’. See Piggin, Evangelical Missionaries, pp. 210–248. F.C. Pritchard, ‘Education’, in A History of the Methodist Church , vol. 3, ed. Davies et al., p. 287, records that ‘rolling off’ was celebrated when a missionary candidate left college, and a ‘warble’ was sung by candlelight when he sailed for his posting. Rev. J.M. Young (Burma 1913–33) aged eighty-two, was interviewed in 1970 by Paul Ellingworth. Porter, Religion versus Empire?, pp. 229 and 327. Porter accuses missionaries of defending non-Christian cultures in public but not in private; and of opposing colonial rule in principle, while depending on it in practice. Comaroff and, Comaroff of Revelation and Revolution, pp. 305–312. Thorne, Congregational Missions, pp.13–19. Most Congregational missionaries were working class, radical and members of LMS. Walls, Missionary Movement in Christian History, pp. 106 and 147. Cohn, Anthropologist among the Historians, pp. 6–7, and Marc Bloch, The Historian’s Craft, translated by Peter Putnam, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1954. Bloch refers to it as the longue durée. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Goudie, 29 August 1920. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Chapman–Rattenbury, 12 March 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/MMS Box 1286/Reed– Childe, 25 March 1950. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/T300: Vincent–Child, 8 May 1963.

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The Upper Burma Mission began as most corporate projects do – with a gleam in an enthusiast’s eye, a feasibility study and a campaign to persuade the Board. Rev. W.R. Winston was the enthusiast, Burma the gleam in his eye and the Wesleyan Conference was the Board.1 Winston was agog when the British took Mandalay in 1885. He had been Chairman of the North Ceylon Wesleyan District for thirteen years and wanted new challenges. Burma answered his prayers. An irascible Lancastrian, Winston was the personification of a Victorian missionary adventurer and he could not bear to think of ‘feebly letting slip the opportunity’.2 Rev. Ebenezer E. Jenkins was General Secretary of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society and a powerful gatekeeper.3 No proposal progressed far without his support. Winston lobbied mercilessly until at the end of 1886 Jenkins’s resistance crumbled. He sent Winston to spy out the land in Burma with Rev. John Brown as his ‘minder’.4 Their main concern was whether they would be welcomed by the Protestant missionaries already there. Rev. Long and Bishop Ninde of the American Methodist Episcopal Church in Rangoon told Winston that the English Wesleyans would be tolerated as long as they stayed in Upper Burma and did not interfere with the American work in Lower Burma. Winston gave his solemn word. Negotiations with the American Baptists were trickier. ‘Father’ Brayton, a seventy-eight-year-old ABM pastor, ‘as jovial as when he first came’, received them warmly. Mr and Mrs Stevens, ABM missionaries in Prome, said they would be delighted if a hundred Wesleyan missionaries came.5 The first warning signs appeared at the Baptist Mission in Toungoo where a letter was waiting from Rev. A.J. Rose. Rose had been in Burma since 1853 and was the ‘doyen’ of the ABM missionaries. He told Winston that American churches had donated $30,000 for the work in Upper Burma, Dr Cushing had been in Burma since 1877, Rev. [ 20 ]

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E.D. Kelly was in Mandalay, and Rev. Carson was on his way to Bhamo where the ABM and China Inland Mission (CIM) both had bases.6 Rose added ominously that SPG was active in Mandalay and that Roman Catholic missions were well established everywhere. The ABM Secretary in America had written in similar vein to Jenkins explaining that a large ‘missionary force’ was steaming towards Burma at that very moment. They were going to establish missions in all the main towns, native workers had been trained and the Bible had been translated into ‘native’ languages. The Secretary warned Jenkins that the ABM missionaries would baptise in ‘the primitive form’, and that ‘divergences of our respective teaching and practice’ will almost inevitably cause friction.7 Winston was irritated by what he called this ‘vacillating spirit’. He urged the ABM officials to decide ‘whether they like us or not’.8 A more sensitive person than Winston would have realised that the answer was ‘not’, but Winston, being Winston, deduced that the Wesleyans would be welcomed with open arms by everyone.9 Winston and Brown were exhilarated by the colonial face of Mandalay. It was dynamic, confident and full of energy. Business was booming, public works were ‘briskly moving forward’, private houses and shops were under construction, and newcomers arrived every week. The Government held monthly sales of land which were fuelling a ferocious property boom.10 Winston and Brown met the Chief Commissioner, Sir Charles Bernard, who urged them to act quickly because land prices were rocketing. Winston was bowled over. Upper Burma was a ‘land open for the Gospel’. Its towns were ‘safe for Europeans to reside’ and it needed Wesleyan missionaries more than anywhere else in the British Empire.11 An air of pessimism hung over the Burmese face of Mandalay.12 The British had crushed the Burmese Army in 1885 and now Indians were taking jobs and exerting ‘their competitive advantage’.13 Like defeated peoples everywhere, Burmans feared that their way of life was under threat – their Buddhist precepts, family values, ancient culture and everyday assumptions.14 The new Colonial Government was unsmiling and efficient and Burmans voted with their feet: 8,000 of them left Mandalay between 1891 and 1901 while 21,000 foreign-born immigrants flooded in. Burmans were as despondent as their conquerors were confident.15 Sir Charles Crosthwaite obligingly reminded them that they were ‘part of the British Empire, subjects of the Queen’ and ‘that the past can return no more’.16 Winston was as jaunty, condescending and hypercritical as the earlier missionaries had been.17 He conveniently forgot that he was an uninvited guest in the land and in true colonial fashion he rubbed more salt into the wounds by showing little sympathy for the Burmans.18 [ 21 ]

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Winston wasted no time. He demanded that six English missionaries be sent immediately to staff his headquarters that would be in Mandalay and the outstations to be established in three other towns.19 Jenkins was dismayed. Winston was putting the cart before the horse. He had yet to produce his feasibility report, the Missionary Committee still had to endorse it and the Wesleyan Conference had not yet granted permission.20 Indeed, Jenkins had had to use all his considerable manipulative skills to win over sceptics on the Missionary Committee. They were businessmen not theologians and scrutinised financial implications with Scrooge-like interest. In the end the Committee did endorse the proposed Upper Burma Mission and recommended it to the Wesleyan Conference which nodded it through later the same year. There was only one condition. The Wesleyan missionaries must work harmoniously with their American colleagues. Even this innocent proviso proved to be ticklish.21 Brown returned to India in May 1887. Winston was alone in Mandalay. He had no money, no budget, and until June 1887 no Conference approval for his mission. Winston strained at the leash. He wanted to buy land, establish mission stations, build churches and recruit missionaries. He had to learn a fiendishly difficult language and only then could he start street preaching, jungle touring, lantern lecturing, school teaching, leper nursing and project managing. It was unbearably hot and ‘death by disease or accident was never far away’.22 Winston had yet to discover that prising Burmans out of Theravada Buddhism was virtually impossible. First, Winston needed a roof over his head. By stroke of luck Rev. Joseph Bateson, a Wesleyan army chaplain, had just arrived in Mandalay. He was billeted in a Buddhist monastery on the outskirts. Winston moved in with him, but a few weeks later Bateson was posted to Bhamo so Winston rented a tiny weaver’s cottage near the town centre.23 The Burmans left Winston alone to set up his Mission. They were absorbed in their own problems. What follows is thoroughly introspective. Wesleyan missionaries often found property development more congenial than saving souls. At first Winston had neither the money nor the authority to indulge his passion for building. He watched glumly as land prices in Upper Burma rocketed. Not wishing to ‘miss the tide’ he bought 5½ acres of prime land in Mandalay on the ‘never-never’. It was a bargain at £7 per acre.24 It led to endless arguments with Rev. John Walton, Jenkins’s successor.25 Not renowned for his meekness, Winston railed against connexional parsimony, pettifogging regulations [ 22 ]

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and slowness to respond to requests. He warned that there would be no progress if he only did ‘what the Committee sanctioned’.26 Throwing caution to the wind he went ahead with his building programme in Mandalay.27 He even started planning a second mission station in Kyaukse, thirty miles away on the Rangoon railway line.28 Pakokku was earmarked for the third. It was a river-port on the Irrawaddy and a good ‘jumping-off place for work among the Chins’.29 Winston tried to squeeze money out of the Missionary Committee to pay off his spectacular debts. He bombarded first Jenkins then Walton with demands for more money, more missionaries and the authority to buy property. Two Singhalese catechists duly arrived in September 1887 and Winston sent them off to Kyaukse.30 Another missionary, Rev. A.W. Bestall, followed in February 1888 and was despatched to Pakokku.31 A third missionary, Rev. Thomas Thomas, came a year later.32 In the meantime, Mrs Winston and little Arthur turned up in Mandalay – more mouths to feed, more homes to find. Winston started a Boys Training Institution and a Girls Boarding School in rented accommodation and opened new school buildings and a chapel in May 1890. As his debts mounted so did his blood pressure. He demanded £1,000 for the buildings he had erected in Pakokku, Mandalay and Kyaukse. In 1889 the spotlight fell on Bestall. He was finding it hard going in Pakokku. His flimsy bamboo-mat hut near the prison overlooked the gallows where public executions took place. He had bouts of fever, and an officious High-Church District Commissioner tried to fob him off with a site out of town. He held out and acquired 4½ acres in the town centre for the bargain price of 400 rupees.33 It provided space enough to build a mission house, church and at least one school. Bestall was a chip off the Winston block and it was not long before the Missionary Committee detected the tell-tale warning signs. Bestall slipped into the role of ‘wheeler and dealer’ on the edge of empire. It was the old story. Bestall was ticked off for buying property without permission. He expostulated that playing by the rules meant losing the land.34 The scourge of ‘matched funding’ began to rear its ugly head during the 1890s. The Government dangled the promise of a building grant of Rs 2,000 in front of Bestall. The catch was that the Missionary Committee had to match it with £500. It was blackmail of course, but Bestall could not resist. He was getting married in 1891 and had to have a mission house for his fiancée. Letters spewed backwards and forwards between Pakokku and London (a month each way by sea) as Bestall haggled with the Missionary Secretary in London and with builders in boom-town Pakokku. At last he received money and permission to build. Now he could turn his hand to architecture and he lovingly [ 23 ]

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designed a mission house fit for his future bride. It had a drawing room, bedrooms, study, prayer room and service rooms, but no portico because ‘there were few carriages in Pakokku’.35 In 1893 Thomas was sent to Monywa, a bustling, cosmopolitan town and headquarters of the colonial civil service for the Chindwin District. It was full of strutting British officials and army officers. Thomas was instructed to set up a new mission station there. He was not as robust or as entrepreneurial as Winston and Bestall and he found the business of buying land, building schools, chapels and mission houses very stressful. ‘After much trouble and anxiety’ Thomas managed to acquire a plot of 5½ acres, but he was not happy in Monywa. I live ‘in a very unhealthy place’ he wrote forlornly in 1893, and ‘owing to the rise of water in the Chindwin River my house was four feet under water so that I was obliged to sleep in a wayside zayat’.36 Winston visited him in June 1894, and was appalled. He had ‘constructed a mat house’ which was ‘not fit to protect a European in this hot climate . . . the walls are of bamboo matting and the sun pours its heat through to such a degree that for four or five hours in the middle of the day and during the afternoon it is too little protection for any European to keep his health’.37 Thomas tried to keep ‘up his work’ whenever he was not ‘down with fever’, but it almost destroyed him. He was desperate for a mission house in Monywa because he too was about to get married. Winston asked Olver (Walton’s successor) for £500 and the now familiar flurry of letters went back and forth. The grant finally arrived in December 1894, but by this time Thomas had been moved to Pakokku.38 A new missionary, Woodward, arrived in Monywa where he found a ‘substantial mission house’ and a building ready for the expanding school.39 A pecking order for building projects began to emerge. Mission houses came first, and were most expensive. School buildings followed, and churches (invariably funded by private donations) came last. It sometimes seemed that chairmen were more interested in the design, construction and repair of buildings than in spiritual matters. Indeed they found it hard to concentrate on ‘missionary toil’ until mission houses were built. Perhaps construction works provided a welcome escape from difficult colleagues and evangelism.40 One after another the Burma chairmen complained about the Missionary Committee’s cheeseparing ways, while Missionary Secretaries suspected District Chairmen of subterfuge and skulduggery.41 Chairmen were masters of obfuscation. A favourite trick was to underestimate the cost of a project and to squeal if the Committee refused to pick up the actual bill.42 Chairmen also cried foul if Missionary Society Secretaries dared interfere in Mission affairs. ‘The man on the spot should know what to do,’ Winston once snorted.43 [ 24 ]

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Chairmen feigned ignorance of financial constraints, while Secretaries gasped when expensive buildings, once built, were immediately consumed by fire, washed away in floods, blown down in winds, destroyed in war or declared obsolete, and had to be built all over again. Chairmen were forever running back to Missionary Secretaries, requesting money for expensive replacements. The Missionary Committee suspected gross carelessness, fecklessness, incompetence or cussedness.44 Exchange-rate fluctuations and the unreliability of government funding caused yet more friction.45 Building grants from the Burma Government were forfeited if they could not be match-funded by the Committee in London. Government grants were sometimes withdrawn without explanation leaving buildings half-finished. Sometimes grants were awarded at the last minute, prompting desperate scrambles for matched funding. Once started, construction projects had to be completed quickly or the grants would be lost. The Missionary Committee was often ‘bounced’ into unbudgeted spending by chairmen unable to resist the lure of government grants.46 Money continued to flow in to fund land purchases and buildings for the next twenty years. By 1907 Wesleyan properties in Burma were valued at Rs 145,000. Scores more land transactions had been negotiated and buildings built by 1920.47 Clearly brick courses, drains and plumbing were more fun than the human condition. By 1894 the small band of missionaries had been in Burma for seven years (figure 2). Despondently they took stock. There had been little progress. Thomas once pontificated that Buddhism had no hold upon the ‘affection or real life’ of the people. It was a naïve claim. The Wesleyans had made few converts, and it comes almost as a surprise to discover that three Burmese Buddhist boys were baptised in Mandalay in December 1889.48 On Christmas Day in Pakokku, Bestall baptised another youth.49 In September 1890 a Christian wedding had been solemnised in Pakokku, and three youths ‘from Buddhist circles’ were baptised in 1891.50 Moreover, two vernacular schools and a leper home had been opened in Mandalay and the Pakokku municipality donated an old hospital to house a Wesleyan Girls School.51 Apart from that, the Wesleyan Mission had little to celebrate after seven years of sweat and toil. Winston despatched pre-emptive warnings to the Missionary Committee in London asking them not to expect a ‘rapid spread of Christianity’.52 During these early days the missionaries seemed to be out of step with everyone – Burmans, colonial officers, Baptists, Catholics and Anglicans – and particularly with their own Missionary Society in London.53 Rev. H. Crawford Walters once complained that ‘on the [ 25 ]

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2 Synod, 1889. Back row: Arthur Solomon (extreme left), Solomon Kodicara (second from right). Front row, left to right: Revs T. Thomas, W.R. Winston, A.W. Bestall.

back of the missionary falls all the burdens’.54 Their relationships with other expatriates in Burma were particularly prickly. Colonials often disdained the Wesleyans and ridiculed their inhibitions. In 1889, when Winston described Upper Burma as ‘a fearfully wicked country’ he had in mind European rather than Burmese society. Bestall detested the lax morality of English colonials in Pakokku and in return they were ‘indifferent’ to missionary labours. In Monywa, too, ‘English services were poorly attended.’55 Health was the missionaries’ biggest bugbear. It was almost an obsession. The years 1889 and 1890 were particularly unhealthy because of cholera epidemics. Mrs Winston and young Arthur caught smallpox in April 1889, and had to be ‘brought back from death’s door’. Thomas contracted typhoid in the same year.56 In Pakokku, during the cholera epidemic of 1918, Chapman and his house servant both caught the disease.57 Some missionaries were more fragile than others. For example, Thomas caught cholera, typhoid three times, had a nervous breakdown and his first wife died from consumption in 1899.58 Malaria, [ 26 ]

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enteric fever (typhoid) and depression were the most common ‘missionary’ complaints, even plague and rabies cropped up occasionally and one missionary contracted leprosy.59 March to August was always the unhealthiest time. Plague, cholera and smallpox swept through Upper Burma most years until 1923.60 Wives and children who fell ill were shipped back to England to recuperate, and during periods of separation frustrated missionary husbands became edgy and unsettled. Some resigned and followed their wives home. Better public health and shorter tours of duty led to improvements after 1930, but Burma remained an unhealthy place for European missionaries. Office politics caused difficulties too, and personnel problems cropped up with increasing regularity as more missionaries arrived. Winston was beside himself in 1897 when the Missionary Committee issued nambypamby new guidelines for the selection of missionaries. Winston had one trusty selection criterion. He looked for ‘a strong man in every sense’.61 It seemed to him that the Committee just wanted men ‘fond of sitting quiet’. Winston felt particularly sore because he had just been reprimanded for buying land, constructing buildings and running up large debts without permission. Effete regulations implied that ‘there is no evil so bad as that of being a few hundred . . . rupees deficient . . . no matter what other victory has been gained’. He and Bestall had only to look at their own colleagues for evidence that the Missionary Society had got it wrong. Some of the newcomers, men like Rev. Phillips, were splendid.62 Others were exasperating. They seemed to get away with ‘want of faith, sloth, humdrum spirit, procrastination, want of enterprise and excessive timidity’, far ‘worse evils than modest debt’. Rev. Thomas Thomas was a frail character. Winston was desperately anxious for him not to return from furlough. He urged the Committee to send a replacement instead. Sherratt duly arrived in Thomas’s place, but was immediately transferred to the British and Foreign Bible Society (B&FBS) in Rangoon.63 Alarm bells rang when Thomas returned in 1897. Within two years his wife had died and he was being ‘prayed back from the gates of death’ with cholera. He became engaged to Agnes, daughter of Rev. and Mrs Shaw of Cleethorpes, but had another typhoid attack in April 1901 and could barely cope with Mandalay High School let alone his circuit duties. On the basis of seniority, Thomas should have become Acting Chairman when Bestall returned to England on furlough in May 1903. He was clearly ‘neither fitted for the duties’ nor did he want to do them. Everyone realised that, but it did not prevent him writing neurotically and superfluously to explain why he did not want the job. He had a very troubled mind.64 [ 27 ]

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December 1904 was a bad time. The headmaster of Pakokku Wesleyan Boys School eloped with the headmistress of the Wesleyan Girls School, leaving Thomas to look after both schools, mark the examination papers and do the circuit accounts – all before Christmas. He was so depressed when he arrived in Mandalay for Synod in January 1905 that he walked straight past Wesley Church where Synod was meeting, along South Moat Road and out of the city. He wandered around for several days in the jungle before being discovered, exhausted and dishevelled, by astonished villagers who dusted him down and returned him to the church. The Chairman put him on the next boat home. His second wife died tragically in March 1907. Thomas never returned to Burma but set himself up as the Methodist Recorder pundit on missionary work in Burma.65 Rev. Alfred Woodward had started promisingly in Monywa in 1894 and looked forward longingly to marrying. He had followed all the Wesleyan Church prenuptial regulations.66 His fiancée, Miss Katie Suart, was the daughter of a prominent Wesleyan in Broseley and her sister was a missionary in the West Indies. It was a marriage made in heaven. Miss Suart was due to arrive in Rangoon on the SS Lancashire on 6 October 1900, and the wedding would take place the moment she stepped off the boat. Just before he started off for Rangoon, Woodward’s pony stumbled in a hole left unrepaired by the Monywa municipal authority. He was still very groggy when he caught the train and as he hobbled along the platform in Rangoon a telegram from Colombo was thrust into his hand. Miss Suart said simply, ‘very sorry not coming to Burma am marrying another Saturday’. On the boat she had met and fallen in love with a Madras Public Works Department engineer. They had rushed off to get married.67 Woodward must have detested Public Works Departments – one had caused his accident and his fiancée had jilted him for another. ‘It seemed to take all the zeal out of his life.’ At Synod in January 1901 Woodward broke down, ‘sick in heart and head’. Bestall packed him straight off to England, instructing him not to return until he had found a wife. Woodward found one – Miss Wakerley – and returned to Burma in 1902, but never recovered and left again in 1903.68 Rev. Joshua Hoyle had arrived in Burma in 1900.69 He began quietly enough in Kyaukse, but in August 1902 he had a mild bout of dysentery and ‘three doctors advised him to go home’. So he went. Without even telling the Chairman he boarded a boat and steamed off to Rochdale. On arrival he told the Missionary Secretary, Hartley, of his illness.70 Ten days later he wrote again to Hartley saying he was about to get married. He rashly instructed Hartley to keep it quiet. Probationers were not allowed to marry: Hoyle was a probationer and Hartley was Head of the Missionary Society. A few days later Hoyle wrote again, [ 28 ]

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confiding in Hartley that he was taking his new bride back to Burma. They looked forward to their honeymoon (at WMMS expense) on the boat. This was the last straw.71 When he heard about it, Bestall exploded. He refused to have Hoyle back because of his ‘limitations’.72 Hoyle didn’t know when to stop digging. He demanded to know ‘on what grounds’ his ‘non-return to Burma was recommended’, and what were his alleged ‘limitations’.73 Bestall was delighted to oblige. Hoyle was ‘a lawless creature, incapable of grasping the value of order’. His faults were unguarded language, hypercriticism, reluctance to submit to authority, causing mischief among his colleagues and disturbing the harmony of the District. Otherwise he was fine. Bestall could have added (but did not) that Hoyle had proposed marriage to several women as well as Miss Hill.74 A Missionary Disciplinary Committee recommended Hoyle’s dismissal. He was shocked and confessed that ‘the severity of the proposed sentence brought me to repentance’. The President of Conference took pity and overturned the sentence. Hoyle’s obituary described how he had ‘won golden opinions wherever he went’. Everywhere, that is, except Mandalay and from everyone except Bestall.75 It should be mentioned here that church rules on marriage imposed intolerable stresses on red-blooded young missionaries. They were not allowed to marry until they had completed long periods of probation – normally five years after leaving college.76 No wonder missionary marriages were awaited so eagerly. It was a miracle that only one case of missionary sexual indiscretion came to light.77 Ten of the twenty-six Women’s Auxiliary missionaries sent to Burma between 1887 and 1965 were snapped up in marriage the moment they arrived.78 Bestall was distracted by the sweltering heat and the imminent departure of Mrs Bestall for England. But there was more trouble to come.79 Mrs Bradford was about to return to England on furlough in 1909. She wanted to take her ayah with her on the boat. The WMMS rulebook did not cover such exotic requests and a fierce debate took place about the cost of an ayah’s fare and the relative merits of Bibby versus Henderson Lines. Vickery joined the fray. ‘We have two babies,’ he wrote to Hartley in 1910, and ‘we would like to bring our ayah back with us’. Mrs Phillips was also due to return to England in 1911 and she had three babies.80 She wanted her ‘Mohammedan male servant’ to go with her. Neighbours in West Bromwich and Maryport must have gaped in awe at the arrival of Burmese ayahs and Muslim menservants.81 While dealing with these tricky personnel issues, Winston and Bestall flailed off angry letters smudged with sweat. Their wild handwriting betrayed intense frustration. The episode of the ayahs reveals how easily missionary wives could adopt colonial habits. [ 29 ]

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3 Synod, 1911, during the heyday of the Wesleyan Mission. Front row, left to right: Revs F.D. Winston (son of Rev. W.R. Winston), Sheldon, Sherratt, Bradford, Phillips, Thomas, Vickery, Bisseker and Walters.

House servants and exotic voyages were beyond the wildest dreams of ordinary people in both Burma and England.82 If the Wesleyan Mission had a ‘heyday’ in Upper Burma, it was during the years immediately before 1914 (figure 3). Small green shoots had begun to appear after 1894. Winston baptised twenty-one people – more than in any previous month – and several others had expressed interest.83 Pupil numbers doubled in the vernacular schools and the Mission planned to start work in the village of Yesagyo thirty miles from Pakokku. Bestall even dreamed of setting up a Wesleyan mission in Pagan, at the heart of Buddhism, although it never transpired.84 Nevertheless, ‘winning new Buddhists to Christ’ was still very slow and Burmans still seemed ‘very well satisfied with Buddhism’.85 Winston left Upper Burma for good in 1898. Bestall succeeded him as Chairman and presided over a ‘growing staff’ of eight new missionaries. Sherratt, Phillips, Bradford, Hoyle, Sheldon, Vickery, F.D. Winston and Bisseker all arrived between 1897 and 1905. There were also two Women’s Auxiliary missionaries, Miss Vickers and Miss Butt.86 It is not clear what was happening in Kyaukse during these early days. The Singhalese catechists, Thomas Covis D’Silva and Solomon Kodicara, had started work there in 1888. Rev. William Vickery, the [ 30 ]

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first missionary in Kyaukse in 1904, described it as ‘a very quiet place’, a ‘circuit of villages’, well irrigated, fertile and prosperous.87 Vickery dismantled D’Silva and Kodicara’s ramshackle mission house, bought a bigger site in the middle of town and built a new mission house, a church, boys’ and girls’ schools, and the innovative slojd training workshops.88 ‘Very good students, full of zeal’ skipped into Wesleyan schools, and people queued up for baptisms. Phillips baptised eight adults in a village near Pakokku with ‘a Christian community of twenty four people’. In 1906 the number of new members was ‘the largest in our short history’. Synod was almost euphoric. There were reports of ‘unprecedented successes’, ‘feelings of hopefulness’, ‘encouraging developments’ and ‘unusual movements in the villages’. Attitudes to Christianity had changed ‘from hostility to tolerance and friendly enquiry’. Bestall baptised six Buddhists in Kyaukse: it was ‘the largest number at one time in our history’. The future seemed ‘bright with promise’.89 A fifth mission station was opened in Pyawbwe in 1907. A school had been started there in 1905. It was supervised from Kyaukse by Vickery.90 Rev. Clement Chapman was stationed to Pyawbwe in 1909. He arrived as the townsfolk straggled back after devastating outbreaks of plague and cholera. Chapman was the only Englishman in town. He lived in a ‘mat house’ and his nearest colleague was seventy-seven miles away. Together with a Burman catechist he preached in the bazaar, but Pyawbwe was an odd place. There was a strange social mix and deeply ‘ingrained’ Buddhism. However, it was a vital staging post for the Shan Hills.91 Under the tutelage of Rev. Edgar J. Bradford, Salin near Chauk also briefly became a separate circuit with its own resident missionary.92 In May 1909 Bradford and Sherratt went on a ‘prospecting’ expedition into the Upper Chindwin which was prospering ‘under the firm rule of empire’. Bradford had his eye on Kindat, the Upper Chindwin Headquarters and Bombay Trading Corporation centre. The town was full of ‘old Monywa boys’ and the thirty-six Englishmen and Eurasians had ‘no religious oversight’. It seemed a ‘magnificent opportunity’.93 Chapman was whisked out of Pyawbwe and stationed to Kindat with Maung Po Chaw, a rising star of Burmese Wesleyanism. He had studied at the Theological Institution in Pakokku and had been ordained in 1913. Between them they made ‘the Chindwin ring’ but tragically Po Chaw died from malaria in 1914.94 In 1912 Bradford and Vickery turned their attention to the Southern Shan Hills. A hair-raising 233-mile journey on ponies took them into a region growing rapidly because of a new railway. They identified Kalaw as the best place for a mission station although its ‘native population’ was ‘insignificant’. [ 31 ]

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Bradford proposed renting a mission house and estimated that a new circuit would cost about Rs 600. In January 1913, Synod agreed to send a missionary to Kalaw.95 Eleven new missionaries – Chapman, Mees, Walters, Moore, Russell, Gordon, Underwood, Young, Early, Adcock and Skinner – and four new Women’s Auxiliary missionaries – the Misses Moore, Merrick, Hanna and Winston – arrived between 1908 and 1916. The Upper Burma Mission was beginning to feel substantial and permanent. Deteriorating relationships with other missionary societies were the only blots on the landscape. Perhaps it was a sign of their growing confidence that missionaries could afford to squabble amongst themselves. In Pakokku in December 1905, a ‘weak’ American missionary from Myingyan and a couple of Baptist Burman government officials began ‘totally immersing’ Wesleyans. Bestall furiously protested to the ABM headquarters in Rangoon, but heard nothing back. Another rumour suggested that SPG was about to send a chaplain to Pakokku. It would have been a disaster because the English headquarters staff worshipped in the Wesley Church.96 Etymological fisticuffs broke out over the wording of baptism passages in the New Testament Revision Committee where Bestall was exceedingly pugilistic. He was aided and abetted by an equally belligerent Bradford who was annoyed that the ‘immersion’ of a prostitute in Pakokku had not interfered ‘with her evil trade’.97 When it was discovered that the ABM was also planning to build a church in Pakokku, Bestall became apoplectic. He wrote another letter of complaint and again received no reply until December 1906 by which time a little Baptist church had already been built. ABM promised to send a catechist, not a missionary, but the episode reopened old wounds. Bestall could not forget the patronising Baptist missionary who had told him, ‘when you came to Burma, you came to our country’.98 The luxury of interdenominational squabbling merely underlined the impression that Burman resistance was crumbling. Ambitious urban Burmans were beginning to accept colonial rule and were clamouring to get their sons (and occasionally their daughters) into mission schools. They were the new symbols of Western modernity. For the moment Upper Burma was peaceful, employment prospects were good, nationalist politics unknown and bright young missionaries arrived one-after-another. In 1914 the future looked very promising indeed. Optimism evaporated after the outbreak of war in 1914. Duty to the Empire clashed with loyalty to the Mission. Rev. J.M. Young started the ball rolling in July 1916 when he joined the Indian Army Reserve as a second lieutenant and went off to Mesopotamia in the King’s Liverpool [ 32 ]

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Regiment. Rev. H.C. Walters, inspired by Lord Kitchener’s death, joined the Yorkshire Regiment and went off in June 1916. No sooner had Rev. Skinner set foot in Burma in November 1916, than he applied for a commission in the army without even consulting the Chairman. In April 1916 the Missionary Society Secretary, Rev. W. Goudie, set the cat among the pigeons. He claimed to sympathise with Young and the others for wanting ‘to render service to the Empire’, but it was ‘of the greatest national and imperial importance’ that they remained at their posts. ‘Incalculable harm’ would be done by this ‘European war between Christian nations’. He warned that when missionaries go off to war they cease to be ‘messengers of peace’.99 On a purely practical level Goudie was unable to fill vacancies left by missionaries who had joined the army. Rev. Underwood was dissuaded from enlisting in May 1918 only after the Chairman ‘objected’. There was mayhem as stations went unfilled and moral wounds were opened.100 The war brought another matter to a head. By 1919 it was clear that membership numbers had been static for several years. The Missionary Committee in London was not pleased. Unfairly, it blamed the Chairman, Rev. A.W. Sheldon. Seven missionaries remained in the District. Collective morale was very low. Rev. A.W. Sheldon was depressed and was about to return to England.101 Walters had just returned from military service and Underwood was unwell.102 Adcock, Chapman, Skinner and Gordon were the only missionaries fully fit for work. Young was still in Mesopotamia, Sherratt was in Rangoon with the Bible Society, Russell and Vickery were on furlough.103 Not a single new missionary had arrived since 1916.104 The seedy Maung An, who was ordained in 1920, was the only new Burmese minister apart from two probationers – Maung Po Tun and Maung Pai Bwin.105 The Pyawbwe and Upper Chindwin circuits had been unmanned since 1914, and in 1921 the ageing Bestall was hauled back from England to be Chairman.106 Spirits began to pick up again after 1924 when Walters succeeded Bestall as Chairman. Three new missionaries – Shepherd, Webb and Froud – arrived, and Sheldon was forgiven. He returned as an ordinary missionary in 1925. After that, a procession of young blades began to arrive – Irvine in 1926, Varney and Willans in 1927, Leigh in 1928, Lewis in 1929, Firth, Vincent, Reed, Hawtin and Sewell in 1930, Kinchin in 1933, Holden and Holmes in 1934, and Acheson and Silcock in 1937. Two new Burmese ministers were ordained during the 1930s – U Khant in 1931 and U San Nwe in 1938, but after 1930 most new ‘native’ ministers were Lushai Chins. A number of new Women’s Work missionaries – the Misses Boyce, Butt, Robertson, Merrick, Guyler, Dawson, Hollinshed, Lawley, [ 33 ]

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Murdoch, Smith, Bush Topping, Gibbons, Cleaver and Mackley – arrived before 1942.107 Several of them married missionaries. The first of these marriages, between Rev. F.E. Skinner and Miss Jessie Winston (daughter of Rev. Winston), was in 1920.108 Ten more followed – and at least fifteen ‘all-Burma-missionary’ babies were produced. Royal glamour mingled with Methodist rectitude in 1920 when a ‘celebrity’ funeral took place for the Wesleyan Princess Teik Tin Ma Gyi.109 The exploits of Rev. Young on his motorbike and sidecar also sent pulses racing.110 There were remarkably few personal tragedies involving the Methodist missionaries in Upper Burma, although in 1932 the popular young Kitty Willans died after her toe turned septic.111 Her death seemed the sadder because it came in the middle of a ferocious row between Kitty’s husband Rev. H.C. Willans and the Chairman, Rev. J.M. Young.112 The argument had started when Young accused Sherratt of poaching Willans to be his successor at B&FBS.113 Young would not even allow Willans compassionate leave after Kitty’s death, insisting that he ‘refined his sorrow in work’.114 The missionaries were stunned and sympathised more with Willans than with Young. Gradually stations that had been closed during the war were reopened and the Upper Chindwin became a circuit in 1929. Tuahranga, the first Lushai minister, was ordained in 1937. In 1931, for the first time a missionary was stationed in Salin. The oil town of Chauk became a circuit in 1932 and Kalaw operated as a circuit between 1916 and 1941. It all sounds exciting, but the 1930s were not celebratory years. External politics dominated the missionaries’ lives. In 1939 while the rest of the world was ablaze, the Church in Upper Burma was astonishingly calm and normal, but World War II finally arrived in Christmas 1941. English people anxious about the war began attending church for the first time and suddenly an era came to an end.115

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W. Ripley Winston b. Preston 1847; Didsbury College 1869; North Ceylon (Jaffna) District 1873; fourteen years as Chairman of the District; Burma 1887–98; d. Blairgowrie 1918. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Jenkins, 8 July 1886. Ebenezer E. Jenkins, MA, LLD b. South Wales 1820; son of devout Methodists; cabinetmaker and teacher; ministry 1845; nineteen years Madras District; established Royapettah College; General Secretary Missionary Society 1877; President Wesleyan Methodist Conference 1880; d. 1905. Brown was Chairman of the Wesleyan Calcutta District. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Jenkins, 27 January 1887. Kelly’s wife was a medical doctor. Bhamo was the base for CIM operations in Yunan. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/ABMS-HQ, Boston–Jenkins, January 1887. A reference to total immersion.

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SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Jenkins, March 1887. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Rose–Winston, November/December 1886. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Jenkins, 2 July 1887. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/W.R. Winston and J. Brown, ‘New Mission in Upper Burma: A First Report for the Wesleyan Methodist Church’, Methodist Missionary Society, 1887. H. Fielding Hall, A People at School, London, Macmillan, 1906, p. 284. Taylor, The State in Burma, pp. 124–125. P. Kecskemeti, Strategic Surrender: The Politics of Victory and Defeat, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1958, p. 5, and W. Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning and Recovery, New York, Metropolitan Books, 2003, p. 5. Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma, p. 221. Crosthwaite, The Pacification of Burma, pp. 8–24. Helen Trager, ‘The Burmese Portrayed by Missionaries: An Analysis of Missionary Writings in English on Burma 1800–1862’, unpublished PhD Thesis, New York University, 1958. Trager explains that Ann Judson accused Burmans of having ‘sunk in the grossest idolatry’ and of being ‘destitute’ of any real principle (Trager, ‘The Burmese’, p. 152), and Sangermano describes Burmans as ‘vile and abject in adversity, but arrogant and presumptuous in prosperity (V. Sangermano, The Burmese Empire a Hundred Years Ago, Bangkok, White Orchid Press, 1995)’, pp. 152–153. U. Maung Maung Gyi, Burmese Political Values: The Socio-Political Roots of Authoritarianism, New York, Praeger, 1983, pp. 69–93. Rev. H.C. Walters, These Forty Years, Mandalay, Wesleyan Mission House, 1928. Missionaries in India had urged WMMS to send missionaries to Burma in 1824. Winston and Brown, ‘New Mission in Upper Burma’, Foreword by Rev. E.E. Jenkins MA, London, Methodist Mission House, Bishopsgate Street. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Undated/Jenkins (note). The original draft resolution is a scrappy piece of notepaper with crossings-out and rewordings. U Pe Maung Tin, ‘Missionary Burmese’, Burma Research Society Journal, 1 (1911), 87. Burmans ridiculed the missionaries’ use of the Burmese language. See Judith L. Richell, Disease and Demography in Colonial Burma, Singapore, NIAS Press, 2006, p. 165. Joseph H. Bateson, CBE b. Kendal 5 March 1865; Friends School, Kendal, Queen’s College Taunton and Richmond College; chaplain Burma Field Force 1886; Secretary, Royal Army Temperance Association in India for twenty years; Secretary, Army and Navy Board 1909; CBE 1918; d. 5 October 1935. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Brown, 8 March 1887. Rev. John Walton succeeded Jenkins; b. Leeds 1823; grandfather, father and father-in-law were Wesleyan preachers; Richmond College 1844; Ceylon 1844–58; Chairman Tamil District, North Ceylon; South Africa 1877; President of Wesleyan Conference 1887; General Secretary, Missionary Society 1888–91; d. 1904. See SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Olver, 25 June 1896 and SOAS/ WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Winston–Jenkins, 17 April 1889. ‘We are miserably under-manned’ and he had had to do everything ‘without the Committee’s sanction’. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Jenkins, 6 August 1887. It cost 560 rupees (£7) an acre. In today’s values, £7=£413 or £2,271 for 5½ acres. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Jenkins, 19 March 1888 and 26 May 1888. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Jenkins, 21 February 1887 and 21 July 1888. Chins and Karens were not Buddhists. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Jenkins, 20 October 1888. ThomasCovis d’Silva and John Solomon Kodicara. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Jenkins, June-July 1888. Arthur H. Bestall b. Tavistock 1863; son of a Methodist minister; Richmond College;

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Burma 1887–1910; Chairman of the District again in 1920; Kaisar-I-Hind gold medal; d. 1936. Thomas W. Thomas b. Porthleven 1865; Handsworth College 1886; d. KirbyMoorside 1923 aged fifty-eight. Rs 400 for 4½ acres in today’s values is about £2,335. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Walton, 17 February, 18 February 1889 and 10 June 1890. His telegraph address was ‘Bestall Mandalay’. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Walton, 10 June and 16 June 1890. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Thomas–Olver, 3 December 1893. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Olver, 5 July 1894 and 16 May 1895. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Olver, 21 June 1893, 21 May and 5 July 1894. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Woodward–Olver, 18 December 1894. There were forty-three boys. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN/1/Bestall–Walton, 10 June 1890. The government grant for Pakokku High School was conditional on completion by March 1918. The Monywa Mission House in Monywa cost Rs 8,921 in 1894 – less than Pakokku Boys High School (Rs 9,000) in 1907, and Mrs West paid for the Mandalay church building in 1930. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Olver, 11 June 1896 and Minutes/ FBN1/General Synod Letter, January 1897. ‘Two friends of the Mission’ (Captain Williams and Surgeon Captain Pridmore) promised ‘to fund an additional missionary’. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/General Synod Letter, 13 January 1899 and Phillips–Hartley, 3 April 1910. A debt of Rs 4,000 remained in 1894 after the building of the mission house in Monywa. Phillips once deliberately jumbled requests for refunds on Monywa, Pyawbwe and Kyaukse insurance premiums with various repair bills. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Findlay, 17 May 1905. Winston confessed he had often acted contrary to the Secretaries’ instructions. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 11 February 1906. The original Monywa Church had been paid for by English residents. It was immediately destroyed by fire. The Missionary Society had to pay for the replacement. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Goudie, 20 February 1920. Sheldon complained about chaotic exchange rates. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Hartley, 25 June 1917. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Burma District Synod Minutes, 10 January 1907, roughly equivalent to £9,666; after 1945 investment shifted to Upper Chindwin. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Walton, 8 December 1888. The first converts were Pho Chway, aged seventeen, son of a Burmese doctor, Maung Khin, son of poor parents, and Pho Ghroug, son of a carpenter. Winston promised that the youths were under no pressure. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Walton, 18 February 1889. His father, a rich merchant, disowned him. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Walton, 23 September 1890 and Bestall–Walton, 4 March 1891. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Thomas–Olver, 9 February 1892. The building was valued at Rs 600. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Thomas–Walton, 1 July and Winston– Walton, 6 August 1890. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Walton, 17 April 1889. ‘Everything I have done in this mission . . . has had to be done . . . in the teeth of some distant prohibition.’ Walters, These Forty Years, p. 12. Harold Crawford Walters, DD b. Highgate 1886; tenth son of Rev. W.D. Walters; ministry 1906; Portsmouth Mission and Richmond

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College; Burma 1910–14; army service 1914–18; Chairman Burma District 1925– 30; Chairman Bradford, North-Lancashire Districts; President of Conference 1956; d. 24 February 1958. Winston, Four Years in Upper Burma, pp. 240–245: Winston and Bestall had to sleep in ‘a dirty shabby little shed . . . with Burmese coolies’, while two supercilious young English lieutenants sprawled in the rest house; SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/ FBN1/Monywa Circuit Report and Pakokku Circuit Report, December 1909. ‘In times of pestilence, English residents feel it is inadvisable to attend a church that has been occupied just previously by a Burmese congregation.’ Also, SOAS/ WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Walton, 9 October 1889. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Walton, 17 April 1889 and 21 May 1890. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Hartley, 30 December 1918; Chapman used it as an excuse for not completing his accounts. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Thomas–Olver, 6 February 1899, and Bestall–Olver, 16 February 1899. Mrs Thomas died after giving birth to their second stillborn infant. Thomas wrote ‘She was sweetheart, bride, wife and mother within a year and now has gone and I am left alone.’ Rev. Vincent Shepherd, in 1942. Richell, Disease and Demography, pp. 157–159. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Olver, 31 December 1896. Thomas Gray Phillips b. Smethwick 1874; Didsbury College 1897; Burma seventeen years; Chairman six years; visited sick on morning of his death 1937. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Olver, 17 September 1898. William Sherratt b. Michaelchurch 1871; Scottish Presbyterian family; Richmond College 1893; interested in ‘wild tribes of the frontier’; awarded Kaisar-i-Hind gold medal 1st Class; d. 1936. See SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1 Thomas–Olver, November 1896, 23 May 1899; Winston–Olver, 23 and 26 November 1896; Bestall–Hartley, 1 September 1900; Bestall–Findlay, 17 April 1901 and 15 May 1902; Thomas– Findlay, 27 December 1902; Bestall–Findlay, 7 November 1903. In 1896 Thomas had to call off a speaking engagement in Poplar Methodist Central Hall. Winston warned Olver that if he didn’t send a replacement missionary some Englishmen in Mandalay would pay for one. See SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Thomas–Bestall, 30 January 1905; Findlay–Bestall, 14 February 1907; Phillips–Findlay, 7 March 1907; Mrs Thomas– Mrs Findlay, 12 February 1905: ‘My husband has had a slight attack of paralysis of the brain’; Bestall–Findlay, 4 December 1906. Thomas wrote to the Methodist Recorder urging Burma missionaries to lead a ‘mass movement’ through ‘jungle work’. Bestall was infuriated and retorted that masses lived in towns. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Woodward–Olver, 14 February 1900. Woodward had completed his probation, received his Chairman’s permission, informed the Missionary Society Secretary and obtained a medical certificate from his fiancée. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Woodward–Hartley, 6 December 1900; Bestall–Hartley, 6 October 1900. The telegram, addressed to Mr Wilkins, with whom Miss Suart was due to stay, ended, ‘Break news to W’; Cooling–Hartley, 6 October 1900. Rev. Cooling in Madras tracked down Mr Smyth and Miss Suart, but could not stop the wedding in St Matthias Church. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Marshall, 31 January 1901. Rev. Joshua Hoyle b. Whitworth 1874; converted by Gipsy Smith; Richmond College; ‘genial and lovable’; d. in Synod Meeting in Swansea 1937. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 16 August 1902; Hoyle– Hartley, 5 December 1902; the doctors say ‘my liver is a little enlarged, my heart showed signs of nervous breakdown’. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Hoyle–Hartley, 16 December 1902. His fiancée was a teacher, Miss Hill. They had been engaged for five years.

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82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97

SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 15 May and 20 December 1902. Bestall described Hoyle as ‘the youth who has drawn the allowances for this work, has been playing ducks and drakes with his furlough and the District has not benefited at all’. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Hoyle–Hartley, 28 April and 8 May 1903. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 28 April, 15 May and 28 June 1903. Minutes of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference, 1837. Ministers could marry after entering ‘the full connexion’, i.e., one year training plus three years’ probation. It involved a missionary, a cook and his wife. Otherwise missionaries had to wait seven years for the next furlough. The Women’s Auxiliary service bemoaned the wastage. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 24 April 1903. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Phillips–Hartley, 22 January 1911. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN/1/Vickery–Hartley, 16 November 1910, and Phillips–Hartley, 19 March 1911. The berth for an ayah on Henderson Line (homeward journey) was £15. The full fare was £33-5-0d. Bibby Line cost £45. Bibby Line employed female attendants, but Wesleyan missionaries normally sailed by Henderson Line. Phillips asked Hartley to advertise a spare bearer’s ticket for the return journey to Rangoon. Fifteen letters were written on this topic between November 1906 and June 1912. Dr Lunn claimed that missionaries in India lived in luxury. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Olver, 17 May and 22 June 1892. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Olver, 21 May 1894. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Olver, 27 August 1894 and Winston–Olver, 1 August 1895. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Hartley, 8 June 1900. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Vickery–Findlay, 10 August 1906. William Vickery b. Brandon, Ireland 1876; Didsbury College; Burma 1903–19; gave Burma talk in Ollerton just before he died 1944. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Phillips–Findlay, 29 May 1909. One site was 4 acres, the other 2 acres. Slojd was a system of instruction in elementary woodwork developed in Sweden. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/General Letter from Synod, 9 January 1905; Bestall–Findlay, 16 November 1905, 6 January and 4 December 1906; Phillips– Findlay, 31 December 1905; Bradford–Findlay, 22 April 1906. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Synod Minutes, 3–10 January 1907. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Chapman–Findlay, 22 July 1909. Clement Henry Chapman b. Beverley 1884; Burma 1908–42; Chairman of the District 1934–43; Superintendent of the Hull Street Circuit 1947; d. 2 October 1967. Edgar J. Bradford b. London 1873; Richmond College 1896; Burma 1898–1914; Acting Chairman of the District; Chairman, Italy District thirteen years; d. 1 January 1940. See Walters, These Forty Years, p. 18. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bradford–Findlay, 6 May 1909. Bradford reported that they had travelled fourteen hours railway, seven days on horseback, nine days by dug-out canoe and two days by steamer. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Synod Minutes, January 1910 and Bradford–Hartley, 11 April 1914. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bradford–Hartley, 20 March 1912; and Minutes/FBN1-2/Synod Minutes, 6–10 January 1913. Bradford’s calculations were frequently overoptimistic. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 10 December 1905 and 24 March 1906, and Phillips–Findlay, 31 December 1905. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Sharpe (Secretary of B&FBS)–Findlay, 19 December 1905, and Bradford–Findlay, 22 April 1906; in B&FBS ‘Revision Committees’ Protestant missions agreed the wording of translations into Burmese.

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SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 19 August and 4 December 1906. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Goudie, 26 April 1915, 28 February, 27 April and 12 June 1916. William Goudie b. Channerwick, Shetland Islands 1857; converted in Consett; Richmond College 1879; Madras 1882; World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh, 1910; two sons killed in World War I; toured Asia 1920–1; President of Conference 1922; d. 1922. A special meeting of Synod deplored Skinner’s action and he apologised. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Goudie, 8 and 30 May 1918. Arthur William Sheldon b. Millom 1877; Grammar School; local solicitor’s office; Headingley College; Burma 1903–27, and Chairman since 1916; d. 1952. His two sons were killed in World War II. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Goudie–Chapman, 26 July 1920. Underwood had a bowel condition and sailed home in August (see correspondence 11 and 14 August 1920). SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Chapman–Goudie, 11 August 1920. Vickery did not return to Burma. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Goudie–Sheldon, 2 January 1920. Maung An was dismissed from the ministry in 1938 and Job Po Chau, the first Burmese minister, had died in 1914. Bestall was fifty-eight and was in Burma from 1887 to 1908. Florence Cleaver, who arrived in Burma in 1937, was the last woman missionary in 1965. Nora Butt (1904–25), Muriel Hollinshed (1920–50), Anna Merrick (1915–42) and Margaret Robertson (1918–46) all served a long time. WMMS absorbed the Women’s Auxiliary Missionary service in 1928. Mandalay, 14 February 1920; Skinner ‘jilted’ his first fiancée, and was in danger of ‘breach of contract’. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Chapman–Goudie, 26 September 1920. Teik Tin Ma Gyi, b. 1874, was granddaughter of King Mindon; her father was murdered by King Thibaw; at fifteen she became a boarder at Mandalay Wesleyan Girls School. She was considered snooty before her conversion and baptism, but then described as a ‘saint’. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Sheldon–Noble, 31 August 1926. Kitty Willans died 4 July 1932. Harold C. Willans, BA b. 1903; Handsworth College 1923; Burma 1927; British and Foreign Bible Society 1932; contracted polio in 1936 and had a special folding chair; d. 1970. His second wife died four weeks before him. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2-3/Young–Noble, 15 January 1932. Young accused Sherratt of ‘tapping-up’ Willans during Synod. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2-3/Young–Noble, 16 July 1932. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6A/Firth Papers: Burma District Report, 1940.

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Politics

The Wesleyan missionaries eyed the world beyond their mission stations with profound suspicion, and neither colonialists nor Burmans knew quite what to make of the Wesleyans. Stephen Neill suggested that whatever their intentions, missionaries were ‘tools of governments’, and a young missionary in Kyaukse suspected that most Burmans assumed they were ‘part of the British Government’.1 Proselytism was officially frowned upon in the Indian Empire. Conversion from one religion to another was highly political and potentially explosive. A royal proclamation of 1858 had decreed that missions must work within their own means and at their own risk. Even Mr Maingy, the first British Colonial Agent in Burma, had had to toe the line.2 Regulatory constraint was the order of the day and it lasted well into the twentieth century. Although colonial officials and their families worshipped in mission churches, they did so as private individuals. Some were devout evangelicals and a few formed close friendships with missionaries.3 There was little love lost between missionaries and most colonial officials, many of whom were unbearably arrogant. Winston abhorred them in the beginning and Miss Dorothy Mackley distrusted them at the end.4 Colonial residents were equally irritated by the prudery of the Wesleyans. In 1925 the Mandalay District Medical Officer, Dr Sheldon, lost patience with the stream of pallid missionaries shuffling through his surgery. He wrote disparagingly to the WMMS Medical Officer in London suggesting that they should have more fresh air and vigorous exercise.5 He was about to suggest that they joined the Upper Burma Club, before remembering the Club’s hefty subscription fees and the members’ liking for whisky and gin-slings (Figure 4). George Orwell might have modelled his foulmouthed ménage in the Kyauktada Club – at least in part – on these real-life club members in Mandalay. The Wesleyan missionaries’ teetotalism and modest stipends separated them from colonial neighbours.6 [ 40 ]

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4 Tennis players, Mandalay Civil Club in 1898. The Wesleyan missionaries co-existed uneasily with their colonial neighbours. Back row: third from the left, District Commissioner; fifth from left, Forestry Officer; extreme right, Deputy Commissioner. Second row (seated): second from right, Mrs Bestall (wife of Rev. A.W. Bestall); extreme right, Mrs Pridmore (wife of Captain Pridmore). Front row, left to right: ‘a lawyer’, Manager of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, Bank Manager and Superintendent of Burma Police.

On the other hand, ordinary Burmans found it hard to distinguish one European from another. They all looked, sounded and smelled the same, lived in the same tree-lined civil lines (the more prosperous section of colonial Mandalay in which European Civilians lived), retreated to Kalaw during the hot season, had their babies in Maymyo Civil Hospital and compared ayahs and punkah-wallahs over cups of Earl Grey tea. In times of danger, Europeans closed rank and huddled together for mutual protection.7 The Wesleyan missionaries enjoyed hobnobbing with the colonial top brass. The Lieutenant Governor, Sir Frederick Fryer, attended the opening of Pakokku Methodist Church in 1902.8 Sir Reginald and Lady Craddock visited the Mandalay Leper Home in 1918 and Pakkoku High School in 1919.9 The Deputy Commissioner presented prizes at Mandalay Wesleyan High School in 1929.10 In 1931 the Governor visited Young’s house to discuss ‘schools and the common talk among Burmans’.11 The Deputy Superintendent of Police attended Mandalay Wesley Church every Sunday.12 Chapman rubbed shoulders with the great-and-the-good on the Rangoon University Council.13 There was [ 41 ]

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good reason for this fraternisation. It enabled ‘intelligence’ to be shared about subversive Burmans, sales of land, government grants, security worries and politics generally. Conviviality was important to both parties. The missionaries needed government money and protection, while the officials wanted the missionaries to preach obedience and to share bazaar gossip with them. World War I disturbed a period of relative calm in Upper Burma. Many Wesleyan missionaries, forestry officers, prison governors, police superintendents and railway managers volunteered for military service and at the same time British troops were transferred from Burma to the front line. The Colonial Government felt vulnerable. The myth of the ‘virtuous Christian Empire’ had been exploded, coercive forces were depleted and civil unrest seemed likely. The Lieutenant Governor tried to enlist the support of the missionaries. In July 1918 he wrote confidentially to Sheldon asking him to dissuade missionaries from joining the army. Instead, he suggested they should become ‘inculcators of loyalty’ free from the suspicion ‘that attaches to exhortations by government servants’. They could, the Governor continued, ‘exercise a beneficial influence on the minds of the people’. The letter provoked heated discussions in Mandalay.14 The missionaries could not agree among themselves where the line lay between duty to Empire and duty to God. The debate continued at regular intervals, and especially in times of danger and low morale.15 There was danger in 1918. The Burmans were restless, the army was overstretched and morale was low. Mark Hunter, Director of Public Instruction, demonstrated this when he suddenly diverted government funds from mission schools to Buddhist schools. It was a sure sign of jitters.16 Missionaries and colonial administrators felt compromised by the 1914–18 war and things were never the same again. It was not until 1942 that the Methodist missionaries finally managed to define the political ‘bottom line’ below which they would not go without betraying their calling to the ‘Divine Master’.17 No such soul-searching seemed to trouble the ABM missionaries who were positively dazzled by imperial glamour. In January 1937 one of them, Miss Lucy Wiatt, described how ‘Mandalay was favoured with a brief visit from our Viceroy, The Marquis of Linlithgow and his Lady.’ It was so exciting. ‘Our Governor, Sir Archibald Cochrane, accompanied the Vice-Regal party which included the Viceroy’s three daughters.’ Miss Wiatt was bowled over by the ‘colourful pomp and ceremony’.18 The trouble was that both Wesleyan missionaries and British colonial officials tended to be action-men rather than philosophers. If only they had paid more attention to Burmese history, they would have learned [ 42 ]

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four lessons. The first of which was that traditional patterns of resistance, palace intrigues, maitreya (future Buddha) rebellions and dacoity erupted serially at moments of national weakness. Civil unrest was likely to disrupt colonial life just as it had destroyed Burmese kings in the past.19 In 1903 there was a foretaste of things to come. A petty millenarian named Nga Ba led colonial authorities a merry dance in Kyaukse. He claimed supernatural powers, tattooed his followers and entered an unholy alliance with Bo Kaing (a notorious dacoit) and U Thein (a militant pongyi). The trio made blood-curdling threats against the Kyaukse District Commissioner, Major Aplin, who called in the Special Branch and deployed battalions of spies and paid informants. Kyaukse resembled a police state until order was restored.20 Subversion tinged with mysticism would continue to bedevil political life in Burma. The second lesson was that foreigners who sneered at Burmese history provoked bitter resentment and also missed the main point about Burma’s past.21 From the times of Anawrahta (1044–77) and Alaungpaya (1754–60), heroic kings had been championing Buddhism and Burmese culture.22 Burmans had always revered these cakkavatti, but for the moment they were forced to swallow their pride. It was almost inevitable that suppressed outrage would transmute one day into nationalist violence. The third lesson was that political legitimacy and Buddhism were inextricably intertwined. A symbiotic relationship existed between King, thathanabaing and Sangha. The colonial authorities made a grave mistake when they broke this bond. First they removed the Burmese monarchy in 1885 and then allowed the position of thathanabaing to lapse in 1938, thereby forfeiting their claim to constitutional legitimacy.23 The fourth lesson was that foreigners meddling in Burmese domestic affairs did so at their peril. The British Government had begun interfering in 1852 when King Mindon first transferred his capital from Amarapura and transformed Mandalay into a great centre of Buddhist modernity. By 1878 the state was almost bankrupt.24 His successor, Thibaw, made things worse by allowing tax-farmers to pilfer thathameda revenues, and presiding over the collapse of the national lottery. He sold off crown lands, granted commercial concessions to disreputable businessmen and created a rickety local government structure. The Royal army, meanwhile, was overstretched by dacoity and insurgency.25 Behind the scenes, unscrupulous British officials and business interests deviously exploited these weaknesses and destabilised both Mindon and Thibaw.26 Nationalists never forgave the British for the [ 43 ]

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role they played in the collapse of the Konbaung monarchy. Britain already controlled Lower Burma as a result of the First and Second Burmese Wars earlier in the nineteenth century.27 Upper Burma was the last piece in a jigsaw. It fell into place when British expeditionary forces seized Mandalay on 29 November 1885. Thibaw was deposed and Burma became a British colony on 1 January 1886. The humiliation was completed on 26 February 1886 when it was made a province of British India. Winston arrived to set up the Wesleyan Mission in Upper Burma as Sir Frederick Roberts was crushing the last vestiges of Burmese resistance.28 Burmese intellectuals seethed with silent resentment, and both colonial officials and missionaries mistook silence for quiescence. They failed to understand that defeated peoples rarely remain passive for long. Two decades later pent-up anger was released with fearsome consequences when outside influences crowded in and radicalised Burmans suddenly found their voices. Rev. Arthur Sheldon returned home in 1920. He had first come to Burma in 1903 and had been Chairman of the District since 1916. The Missionary Society in London regarded him as something of a failure and even his obituary spoke of attention to detail rather than imagination and vision. But Sheldon was much more of a prophet than a villain.29 In 1920 Sheldon realised that Burma was awash with dangerous foreign ideas and that the colonial ‘gagging’ laws were unable to cope.30 Young Burmans breathed in subversive notions from abroad and the Government lost its political nerve. A mêlée in Upper Burma threatened to engulf the Mission and put Wesleyan schools at risk. Sheldon believed the tiny trickle of Burman converts would soon dry up and that the impact of nationalism would be more devastating than economic collapse. He warned that in these ‘changeful and bewildering times . . . heaving tides of world movements’, communism, fascism and the like would wash across Upper Burma.31 Sheldon blamed the vernacular press for inflaming ‘intellectual life’ in Burma.32 Other Southeast Asian countries were ‘imagined’ communities but Burma was not. Burma’s centuries-old culture was bound together by its monarchy, religion and language.33 The monarchy had been removed and modern colonial education was now eroding the language. Mission-educated Burmese children were taught to speak and think in English, and when they left school they rushed off to join the virtual communities that were beginning to criss-cross the British Empire. It was here that young Anglophones absorbed wild political notions emanating from India.34 It was ironic that the first [ 44 ]

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real challenge to colonial rule should come from mission schools – the powerhouses of Western discipline.35 Bright young men in India and Burma followed similar trajectories. The former attended elitist English schools like Fergusson and Elphinstone and ended up in Punjab University College Lahore, while the latter were educated at St Paul’s, St John’s or a Wesley high school and progressed to Rangoon University. A select few met in Calcutta University, but for most Burmans Rangoon was ‘the apex of [their] looping flight.’ On these educational ‘pilgrimages’ Indian and Burmese students imbibed the same subversive political ideas and revered the same radical heroes.36 Before 1920 ‘moderate’ nationalists like Naoroji, Banerjea, Ranade, Gokhale and Dutt held sway in India. Burmese nationalists were happy to follow their lead. The moderates cooperated with the colonial authorities, preferring social reform to political revolution.37 The situation changed dramatically in the early 1920s when radical ‘extremists’ began to replace the moderates. They were recognisable by the catchphrases ‘militant patriotism’, ‘renascent Hinduism’, ‘Buddhist modernism’ and ‘national unity’. Ghose described nationalism as ‘a religion that has come from God’ and the ideas of Chatterjee and Lajpat Rai excited Burman and Indian nationalists in the same way that Tilak’s florid metaphors and incitements to rebellion had impassioned boycotters in 1906.38 The fraternity between Burmese and Indian radicals was reinforced in 1907 when Tilak was deported to Burma and imprisoned in Mandalay. Gandhi succeeded Tilak as leader of the Indian National Congress Party in 1920, but his public fasting in 1924 and his programme of peaceful non-cooperation did little to eradicate violence from Indian politics.39 Extremist representations of ‘the nation’ as language, history and religion, and their campaigns for swadeshi, ‘national’ schools and boycotts of foreign goods, struck chords with Burmese nationalists.40 The Burmese economy collapsed spectacularly at the end of the 1920s, by which time ideological seeds had already taken root. European travellers arriving by boat in Rangoon were astonished as well-educated young Burmans swarmed aboard in search of work.41 University graduates and English-speaking clerks were unemployed as a result of the economic downturn. Hundreds of others, although still employed, had hit ‘ceilings’ beyond which they could not progress. Big colonial enterprises such as the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation, Steel Brothers, the Burmah Oil Company and the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company stratified their jobs by race.42 Similar restrictions applied in the colonial civil service. The restrictions destined intelligent young Burmans to remain at the bottom of the employment heap.43 [ 45 ]

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This jumble of jobless youths and resentful workers breathed in the same new radical ideologies. In 1931 Alice Thayer, an American Baptist missionary in Mandalay, noted that soviet-style Indian leaders were infecting Burma with ‘some of the most blood-curdling seditious literature imaginable’.44 Indian radicalism infiltrated the ‘centres of proud and independent monastic learning’ in the Lower Chindwin. U Ottama, the leading Burmese radical, slipped back and forth across the frontier on his way to and from Calcutta. In India he had been influenced by Chatterjee and he took part in anti-British protests in Bengal. When he returned to Pakokku in 1919 he joined the so-called ‘Yesagyo Tutorial Group’, a hothouse of radical Buddhist scholarship.45 U Ottama was already well known to the police in Burma and had spent time in prison in 1920.46 The Wesleyan Synod in January 1921 was dismayed by the ‘storms of political and religious unrest’ which were engulfing young Burmans in ‘sedition and intrigue’.47 Gandhi’s promise to free Indians ‘from any yoke whatsoever’ had fired the imagination of Burmese nationalists.48 U Thein Pe Myint and other secular Burmese intellectuals incorporated Gandhi’s political ideas into the propaganda of Burmese nationalists. Burmans were not constrained by the religious differences that fragmented Indian nationalism.49 In Burma it was simple. Buddhists were friends, Christians were colonialists, while Hindus and Muslims were scapegoats, sucked in by the colonial ‘plural society’, cast adrift from India and ‘guilty-by-association’.50 Arguments about the Legislative Assembly, the Dyarchy and religion spilled noisily onto the streets of Mandalay in the early 1920s. Supporters of Western institutions were labelled ‘social outcastes’.51 Burmese Wesleyans were terrified of being recognised as Christians.52 A series of rowdy public meetings erupted in 1924 when U Ottama arrived at Shanzu Station in Mandalay to address a political rally. Scuffles broke out and the police shot a monk and arrested U Tun Aung Kyaw, Treasurer of the General Council Burmese/Buddhist Associations (GCBA).53 A long and uneasy truce followed these events, but in the late 1920s Walters noticed increasing ‘nationalist sentiment’ in the villages around Mandalay. He assumed it was due to the slump in rice prices and unrest in Lower Burma. In January 1930 Wesleyan harvest thanksgiving services were unusually subdued, reflecting the sombre mood in the country as a whole.54 American Baptist missionaries were better informed about agricultural problems. Some of them came from the Midwest and knew [ 46 ]

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how American farmers were suffering in the depression. Alice Thayer, an ABM missionary in Mandalay, was a Kansas girl. She knew the exact price of a basket of rice and how price fluctuations affected rice farmers – particularly if they had no storage facilities at harvest time. She blamed foreign cartels for ‘cornering the market’ and for forcing down prices. ‘It is really very hard on the people’, she wrote, ‘because rice is the only thing they have to depend upon, and my sympathies are with the villagers in this trouble.’ She understood how superstition and violence could infect ignorant country people gripped by ‘financial depression’.55 The Wesleyan missionaries were relatively ignorant about rural politics and were generally less sympathetic. They could not see beyond the ‘yellow robed pongyis’ fishing in the ‘troubled waters’ of Mandalay and causing mischief ‘at the storm centres of trouble’.56 The Wesleyans were perplexed because pongyis were poisoning the minds of ordinary ‘Burman Buddhists’.57 Even the American Baptists were shaken by Buddhist truculence in the towns. Alice Thayer described an incident during a drama workshop in her church. ‘Some pongyis pushed roughly into the circle and yelled at the man who was speaking at the time.’ The performance ended in a violent altercation.58 Pongyis seemed able to act with impunity anywhere and everywhere. Rev. J. Mervyn Young became Chairman of the Wesleyan District in 1930 (Figures 5a and 5b). Sensitivity and humility were not among his most prominent virtues. The older he got, the more grumpy Young became, and many anecdotes circulated about him.59 A menacing political storm was rumbling during 1930, it was one of many undermining ‘the body politic of Empire’.60 Mandalay was unusually tense in May. Threatening graffiti appeared on walls and rumours spread around the city like wildfire. Agitators, ‘especially certain parties of the pongyis’, lurked in the alleyways of the Thamadawzay bazaar.61 Young attributed the tensions to four unconnected phenomena: Gandhi’s arrest in India, an earthquake in Upper Burma in May 1930, a jailbreak in Rangoon and racial problems. He thought the last of these was most important. Trouble between Indian dockworkers and Burmese labourers had started in Rangoon and spread to Hanthawaddy District. By May 1930 it was affecting Mandalay. Antagonism between Burmans and Indians reached breaking point and, to make matters worse, the Simon Commission was about to report in June.62 In Mandalay the District Commissioner believed that insurrection was imminent. He visited several trusted European friends, including Young, on 2 June. After the Commissioner had left his house Young crept around Mandalay in the dark, instructing his colleagues to stay at home.63 The expected riots did not happen, but the city was on a knife [ 47 ]

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5a

Synod, 1932. A political storm was brewing in Mandalay during the early 1930s.

5b

Key

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edge and trouble was expected at any moment. The Burmans had ‘hairtrigger’ tempers and Europeans feared that they would be attacked. The police force was seriously undermanned and there was only one British police officer in the whole of Mandalay. If trouble broke out the army was unlikely to intervene having been savagely criticised in nationalist newspapers.64 Young’s closest friend was the District Magistrate. He was responsible for emergency plans to deal with civil disorder. He had recruited Burmese and Hindustani special police and divided Mandalay into four segments. Each quarter was to be placed under the command of a civilian supervising officer answerable to the British District Superintendent of Police. In the event of serious civil disorder, the Police Superintendent would declare martial law. If necessary his supervising officers could then order the police to fire on the crowds. The Magistrate invited Young to be one of the four civilian supervising officers. Young was flattered and cabled the Mission Secretary for permission. An emergency meeting of the Missionary Committee was convened in London because Young’s request raised delicate moral issues. The Committee was divided, but it gave Young the go-ahead. Martial law was never declared, so luckily Young was never required to order police to shoot members of his Burmese flock. However, it was a close-run thing.65 The troubles were far from over. The Hsaya San rebellion broke out in Lower Burma at the end of December 1930.66 Mandalay was not directly affected but tensions ran high in the city and continued to do so throughout 1931. There was ‘scare after scare’ and any ‘raised voice’ could cause panic. According to Young, ‘Buddhist monks as ever, were the storm centre of trouble.’ The rebellion dragged on interminably, dying ‘down in one place only to burst out in another’. Outrage, murder and the killing of hundreds of rebels brought suffering to ordinary villagers. Trains were sabotaged and the road to Maymyo was extremely dangerous. It was unsafe to walk in Mandalay at night. The economic situation worsened and it was ‘as if all the money normally in circulation’ was sucked out of the country. Young applied a peculiarly Wesleyan form of economic measurement. He noted that ‘church collections had fallen from 130 rupees to 30 rupees a week’.67 Large areas of land went out of cultivation and by June 1931 the retail price of paddy had ‘dropped to the bottom’. The rains failed in August 1931 and famine looked likely. Young predicted that February would be the most dangerous time when taxes became due.68 The Wesleyan missionaries rarely commented on unrest in Lower Burma, but Young (having previously shown no interest) realised that small landowners were struggling most.69 In Mandalay there was ‘an explosive mixture [ 49 ]

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of fear, poverty and unemployment’. Despite these economic woes, in Mandalay the consensus was that racial antagonism between Indians and Burmans lay at the heart of the rebellion.70 The Hsaya San rebellion was all but over by October 1931. Official reports interpreted it as an attempt to overthrow the Colonial Government.71 However, its causes were more complex and have been debated at length by Collis, Solomon, Warren, Adas, Scott, Ghosh, Herbert and others. Competing suggestions include, Hsaya San’s personality, So Thein factionalism, the politicisation of the peasantry by wunthanu athins (village nationalist associations) and the Government’s lack of ‘legitimacy’. Others claim that millennial Setkya-min and minlaung mythologies or a revolt against head taxes were the reasons.72 Ian Brown’s authoritative analysis of the complexities of tenure structures, taxation, foreclosures, rice prices and Chettiar credit, concludes with the explanation that small landowners were both the main losers in the economic depression and the foot soldiers of the revolt.73 Like many other colonials at the time, Young did not question the findings of the Government’s Interim Report.74 What is more, the District Police Superintendent, Mr Prescott, was a member of his congregation in Mandalay and had captured Hsaya San. Young derided ‘credulous jungle-wallahs’ who believed it was only the ‘double’ of Hsaya San. The rebellion left a legacy of crime, distress and inflation.75 Thieves in Mandalay murdered their victims rather than risk detection and execution.76 The slightest rumour of a riot in the bazaar was enough to cause panic and parents would rush to pick up their daughters from Mandalay Girls High School.77 Burmese Wesleyans waited anxiously for a Buddhist backlash they believed would be launched ‘against those who differed from them in faith or race’.78 Waves of trouble continued to sweep across Upper Burma. Most were vague manifestations of nationalism. The missionaries were still trying to make sense of the Hsaya San rebellion that had only just ended. They knew that it was an agricultural phenomenon originating in Lower Burma, but beyond that, very little. The new episodes were even more baffling. Taylor (with the benefit of hindsight) explains that there were two nationalist traditions – a ‘rural group’ of small landowners and peasant farmers and an ‘urban group’ drawn from the middle classes. The rural group blamed the modern state for high taxation, high rents and falling incomes. It aimed to evade or destroy the state. The urban group had benefited from the modern state and wanted to capture its apparatus intact by defeating the British. The two traditions combined only [ 50 ]

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after the Buddhist Sangha recognised nationalists of all persuasions as legitimate heirs of the Burmese state. At this point a third group emerged. It was led by Marxist students who wanted to wrest control from the Burmese political elite which it accused of collaborating with the colonial regime.79 People in Upper Burma in 1936 were utterly confused and it was no wonder that the Methodists proffered a variety of inadequate and improbable explanations. The unrest was due, they said, to ‘national and religious prejudices’, collapsing global markets, pongyi intrigues and political manoeuvring.80 By 1937 the focus had shifted again, this time to the ‘obsessive demands’ of Dobama Asiayone (see below) and the issue of ‘Separation’. Most Wesleyan missionaries were in favour of ‘Separation’ and regarded Dr Ba Maw as an ‘outstanding leader’. They were mystified by Thakin Ba Thoung’s pronouncement that Burmans would be British bondsmen if they voted for Separation and British slaves if they voted against.81 Synod suspected GCBA of breathing new life into the ‘waning power of the Buddhist Faith’ in order to bring Burma under ‘their dictation’. Furthermore, Young’s successor, Rev. H.C. Chapman, was highly critical of the ‘gallery-play’ and ‘dirty tricks’ of politicians and their motions of no-confidence against Dr Ba Maw.82 Between 1936 and 1938 incidents of unrest seemed to flare up out of nothing and politicians squabbled about irrelevances (like a proposed state lottery) while cashstarved public services collapsed around them.83 There was a general sense of decay. The most serious communal rioting broke out in Rangoon during July 1938. Its obscure origins dated back to 1931 when a Muslim schoolteacher called U Shwe Hpi published a book in Mandalay. No one had paid much attention at the time, nor even in 1936 when the book was reprinted. Then in 1938 a Rangoon Muslim merchant allegedly extracted inflammatory passages criticising the Buddha, and published them in the form of a pamphlet. This provoked demonstrations, and martial law had to be declared. Rioting spread to Mandalay although it was relatively short-lived. Within a few days Chapman noticed that Burmans and Indians were mixing quite freely again, shops had reopened and trams were running as normal. However, the atmosphere remained tense, especially in the Thamadawzay quarter where pongyis looked ‘for any excuse to create trouble’. In Pakokku too, troops fired on a procession not far from the Wesleyan Church. Chapman blamed ‘mischief-makers’ for orchestrating the unrest in Mandalay, and he pointed the finger of blame at Dobama Asiayone.84 A particularly unpleasant incident occurred on 27 August 1938 when ‘three or four people were badly slashed with dahs’. A crowd of about [ 51 ]

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200 people gathered near the Wesleyan school in Thamadawzay and set fire to a house belonging to an Indian. Chapman insisted that the mob had been incited by pongyis who were trying to prevent Burmans from buying goods in Indian shops.85 It looked as if pongyis (according to some reports, tens of thousands of them) had entered an alliance with agitators from ‘the Thakin movement’.86 British nerves jangled throughout 1938, and jangled even more vigorously in January 1939 when ammunition was stolen from an army base in Mandalay.87 The police raided monasteries and national schools. Two pongyis – U Thuthama and U Awbartha – and a number of student leaders were arrested. The missionaries felt betrayed by the ‘Burmese people whom we have loved and sought to serve for the past fifty years’. They were convinced that the people had been led astray by disgruntled politicians, nationalists, pongyis, released prisoners and truculent young scholars.88 During 1938 and 1939 oil workers and students took part in communal rioting and demonstrations on a grand scale. There was serious nationalist disorder in the oilfields, although curiously Synod said little about it. By contrast the concurrent disturbances in mission schools were debated in minute detail (see Chapter 5). Maybe it was because the disturbances in schools were directed specifically against the missionaries and because Wesleyans instinctively disliked civil disobedience. The Marxist-dominated All Burma Students’ Union (ABSU) and Dobama Asiayone (We Burmans) expanded rapidly during the 1930s. Dobama had begun as a student political movement in 1933 but quickly embraced industrial workers and cultivators. Its members adopted the title ‘thakin’ (master) and by 1938, under the charismatic leadership of Thakin Aung San, it had become a force with which to be reckoned.89 The Marxist writer Thein Pe Myint drew attention to conditions in the oil towns of Chauk and Yenangyaung. His short story ‘Oil’, published in 1938, is about an ordinary oil worker in Chauk (Ko Lu Dok) who extracted huge amounts of oil each day but could not afford to buy cooking or lighting oil for his family. Thein Pe Myint contrasts the sparse life of Ko Lu Dok’s family with the opulent lifestyles of Burmah Oil Company bosses.90 Of course the story is overblown and sentimental, but it was effective propaganda. Thirty years later the Burmese historian Daw Khin Yi examined the events of 1938 more soberly. She described the role of the Dobama Oilfield Workers’ Association, how it organised mass meetings and huge processions through the streets of Chauk and Yenangyaung, and how the Association managed to persuade workers to take part in industrial action. A damaging strike subsequently shut down production in the oilfields.91 [ 52 ]

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Three Wesleyan missionaries – Shepherd, Webb and Firth – were stationed in Chauk between 1932 and 1940.92 Strangely, none of them said much about the momentous events going on around them. Thein Pe Myint may have been a Marxist and Daw Khin Yi highly partisan, but the Wesleyan missionaries seemed too close, perhaps, to BOC managers.93 Firth’s role is particularly interesting. He lived in Chauk from 1936 to 1939, so was ideally placed to comment on conditions there. Unlike Thein Pe Myint, he blamed the oil workers’ materialism and ‘high wages’ for most problems in the town. He suspected that they had too much money and too many opportunities to spend it ‘in unsatisfactory ways’.94 Firth was at pains to point out that the lowest-paid labourer in the oilfields earned far more than any agriculturalist in Burma, and he alleged that Burmans were incapable of ‘understand[ing] the value of money’. ‘Given a salary of thirty rupees a month’, he joked, the Burman ‘will live at a rate of thirty five rupees.’95 Firth staunchly defended the BOC management. ‘For all they talk about European exploitation’, he wrote, ‘Burmese employees of BOC had every facility.’ They were well housed, well fed and had access to ‘the best hospital in Burma’. They also enjoyed ‘the best possible’ terms of employment.96 Many of Firth’s friends were government officials and BOC managers who were pleased the missionaries were there ‘to serve the community’.97 Firth went on to describe the daily toil of oil workers and their families. The men started work before dawn. The women went to the bazaar and did their housework. The men returned for breakfast at 10.00 a.m. after ‘strenuous work out on the field’. Then they went back to work until the late afternoon.98 It was tedious, but Firth made it sound not too bad. There was no hint of exploitation or dissatisfaction and he asked no awkward socio-political questions. Throughout the troubles the Church continued ‘without hindrance’, presumably because missionaries were useful allies, as were the ‘three European ladies’ whose Sunday school in Yenangyaung never closed throughout 1941.99 There is an interesting sequel to the Chauk episode. Rev. Denis Reed was Chairman of the Methodist District in the 1950s. He was embarrassed by the deal that had been struck between the Wesleyan Church and the Burmah Oil Corporation two decades earlier. The Church agreed to station a missionary in Chauk, and in return BOC provided, rent-free, the Union Church building and a manse for the missionary. It was all too cosy. Here was a Methodist missionary living in a fine house in the plush bosses’ quarter of town with free membership of the European Club. It was a lifestyle designed to separate the missionary from his Burmese flock. Reed was concerned how it might appear both to Burmans and to Europeans and what would happen if the Methodist [ 53 ]

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Church criticised the policies or actions of BOC. He also feared that the Company expected the missionary to succour European managers and preach obedience to Burmese workers. Reed felt that the arrangement was a denial of the Church’s purpose in Burma, and by implication he called into question Firth’s comments about oil workers during the 1930s. In 1954 Reed ended the agreement with BOC and withdrew the missionary from Chauk.100 After 1939 Dobama Asiayone could no longer stir up BOC employees. Many of the workers were Indians, disgruntled with Dobama’s pro-Burmese stance.101 Jan Becka suggests other ideological reasons. He accused Dobama of confusing Marxism with anti-colonialism. Its leaders, he said, were the sons of elite Burmese families who found it hard to empathise with ordinary oilfield workers.102 In the 1930s, Chauk and Yenangyaung were full of migrant workers from all over Burma, just as the rice frontier had been earlier in the century. Many of them came from rootless ethnic and religious minority backgrounds rather than from stable, agrarian Burmese Buddhist communities. They sought refuge in non-traditional havens – Marxism, Christianity and alcohol. In 1939 the Methodists estimated that 200 native Christians were living in Chauk and Yenanyaung.103 In Chauk alone, 400 Christians worshipped every Sunday.104 They were tiny numbers, of course, but far more than elsewhere in Upper Burma. Christian workers, like Buddhists, often lost themselves in the crowd and ‘lapsed into indifference and apathy’. However, they were trusted by BOC managers. In the febrile atmosphere of late 1941, when other workers fled from the town, many Christian families remained. It was as if Christian workers and European bosses clung together in adversity.105 Clearly, the Methodist missionaries were neither passive nor neutral. By historic instinct perhaps, Wesleyans identified with ‘bosses’ against militant workers and preached compliance rather than industrial unrest.

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SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Leigh–Johnson, 11 February 1929, and Neill, Colonialism and Christian Missions, p. 11. J.S. Furnivall, ‘The Fashioning of Leviathan’, Journal of the Burma Research Society, 29 (1939), 12; the maverick Maingy had ‘no rough side to his tongue – one side was smooth and the other smoother’. He was forced to use a regimental ballcourt rather than build a chapel. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Monywa Circuit Report, 31 December 1908. One government official assisted the missionaries with street-preaching, and examples of friendships included Captain Waymouth and Bradford in Pakokku, and Mr Justice Pratt and Skinner in Mandalay Winston, Four Years in Upper Burma, pp. 240–245, and SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/ MRP-2/3(e)/Mackley Papers, Recollections 1939–45. Dorothy Mackley b. Bradford 1910; Burma 1940–42 and 1947–59. She arrived in Burma in March 1940 and

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travelled from Rangoon to Kyaukse by train. It stopped at a station en route. When the Indian guard announced that the train was ready to go, a British official shouted ‘that the train would leave when he had finished his dinner and not before’. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Dr Sheldon–Dr Wingfield, January 1925. Sheldon suggested that ‘a pukka tennis-court’ should be laid at the mission house; the missionaries refused to play tennis at 105° in the shade. George Orwell, Burmese Days, London, Victor Gollancz, 1935. Lackersteen, Ellis and Flory were fictitious members of the Kyauktada Club. See Emma Larkin, Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop, London, John Murray, 2004, pp. 6–52. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Letter to Burma District Synod, 4 December 1920. A married missionary received £250, plus allowance of £20 per child, plus horse allowance of £24, plus wear-and-tear allowance of £5. Prices were high at the time; the annual cost of a servant was Rs 1,000, and food costs per person were Rs 2,007. E.g. in the ‘troubles’ of 1930, Young was friendly with the District Magistrate in Mandalay; in 1942, Firth assisted British officials in evacuation. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 2 August 1902. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Hartley, 8 July 1918; Sheldon– Goudie, July 1919. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Walters–Johnson, 11 October 1929. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Young–Noble, 13 June 1931. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Young–Noble, 2 February 1931. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Chapman–Noble, 9 March 1936. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1-2/Burma District Synod: Report of Pastoral Session, 30 May 1918. The confidential circular dated 2 July 1918 was from Honourable W.F. Rice, Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma and addressed to the Bishop of Rangoon. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Goudie, 15 November 1919. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Goudie, 29 August 1919. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Chapman–Rattenbury, 31 August 1942. The debate concerned Rev. Acheson’s request to work for British Intelligence. American Baptist Foreign Mission Society/Cornell University Library/Rare and Manuscript Collections/Records # 4424, Miss Lucy Wiatt, 9 February 1937. D.G.E. Hall, Burma, London, Hutchinson’s University Library, 1950, pp. 7–87; the earliest records are in Pali fragments, Buddhist jatakas (birth stories of Buddha) and chronicles dating back to c. 241 BC, e.g. the feeble Sawlu (1077–84), Narathihipate (1254–87), an ‘eastern despot . . . without redeeming features’, and Tabinshwehti (1531–50), a drunkard infatuated by a Portuguese favourite. The Shan brothers Athinkaya, Yazathinkyan and Thihathu seized power in the thirteenth century and Mon kings during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Foreign enemies included Yunnanese, Arakanese, Manipuris and Ayuthia. Myanmar National Archives, Diary and correspondence of Major Aplin, District Commissioner, Kyaukse, April 1903. Aplin was assisted by Subadur Maung Po and Inspector Maung Tun Tam. Winston, Four Years in Upper Burma, p. 27: Burmese history was full of superstition and an ‘absurd’ preoccupation with the ‘white elephant’. See Emmanuel Sarkisyanz, preface to Ni Ni Myint, Burma’s Struggle Against British Imperialism. Sarkisyanz points out for example that Bayinnaung (1550–81) defeated the Shans and Ayuthia and rebuilt Pegu, that Dammazedi (1472–92) was famous for his wisdom and Buddhist devotions, while Thalun (1629–48) was a great lawmaker and administrator. Spectacular pagodas were built, including the Shwedagon and Shwemawdaw pagodas in the fourteenth century and the Mahazedi pagoda to house the Buddha’s tooth in the sixteenth century. During the same period the Sangha and tripitaka (scriptures) flourished and there were developments in the law. For example, Sarkisyanz cites Shin Aggathamahdi’s thirteenth-century jataka, Thalun’s ‘Revenue Inquest’ of 1638 and the Maharaja dhammathat laws which were compiled by Thalun’s minister, Kaingsa.

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See Ian Harris, ‘Buddhism and Politics in Asia: The Textual and Historical Roots’, in Buddhism and Politics in Twentieth Century Asia, ed. Harris, London, Continuum, 1999,pp. 1–25, and Donald Eugene Smith, Religion and Politics in Burma, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1965, pp. 3–57. Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma, pp. 130–132, and D. Woodman, The Making of Burma, London, The Cresset Press, 1962, pp. 222–230. Mindon installed electricity, encouraged Burmese literature, supported 217 monasteries, donated millions of rupees to pagodas and organised a great Buddhist synod in Mandalay in 1871. He succumbed to a palace revolution when the Myingun and Myinhkondaing princes rebelled and the Prince of Padein took Shwebo and marched on Mandalay. Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma, pp. 163–170. For example, Moola Ismail built the Mandalay market. The new local government structure (hkayaing) failed when the hkayaing wuns refused to leave Mandalay for remote fiefdoms, thathameda was a capitation tax, and the lottery was introduced in 1878 and abandoned 1880. Sir Michael Symes became British Ambassador to the Court of Ava in 1795. He raised fears of French colonial ambitions, and the threats to India’s north-eastern frontier. In 1809 Captain Canning reported that Burma was too poor and backward to threaten India. By the Treaty of Yandabo of 1826 Burma ceded Arakan, Tenasserim, Assam and Manipur and paid an indemnity. India’s north-east frontier was thus secured. Ian Brown points out that it also enabled the area to be cleared for rice production in the 1870s. The leaked memo from Sir Owen Burne to Lord Randolph Churchill in 1885 which said, ‘King Theebaw’s sins are many and great but your able pen, aided by a few snarls from myself could formulate a bill of indictment against him that would make every old woman in London weep’, betrayed the level of British subterfuge. The First and Second Burmese Wars of 1826 and 1852. Crosthwaite, The Pacification of Burma, pp. 13–18, and Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma, pp. 163–170. Minutes of the Methodist Conference, 1953; Sheldon died in 1952 grieving at the loss of his two sons, killed in World War II. Emma Larkin, ‘The Self-Conscious Censor: Censorship in Burma under the British, 1900–1939’, Journal of Burma Studies, 8, (2003), 64–101. The Books and Publications Act of 1898 and the 1910 Press Act were ineffective and Burmese nationalism grew. It was impossible to hold back the tide of contrary opinions and dissent. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod: General Letter, 9 January 1935. Michael Adas, The Burma Delta: Economic Development and Social Change on an Asian Rice Frontier, 1852–1941, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1974, and Ian Brown, A Colonial Economy in Crisis: Burma’s Rice Cultivators and the World Depression of the 1930s, London, Routledge and Curzon, 2005, review the relationship between Burmese nationalism and economics. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Goudie, 29 August and 15 November 1919. Thuriya (The Sun) was a nationalist newspaper founded by U Ba Pe, leader of YMBA; other radical newspapers included Knowledge, Burma Observer, Rangoon Mail and Burma Critic. The 1891 Census reveals a male literacy rate of 70 per cent, and that 90,000 boys attended monastic and secular schools. The inaugural meeting of the Indian National Congress was in 1885; radicalism was more advanced in India. See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, London, Verso, 2002, pp. 45–46. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 114. Anderson coins the phrase, ‘geography of colonial pilgrimages’. Romesh Chunder Dutt (1848–1909), Dadabhai Naoroji (1825–1927), Surandraneth Banerjea (1848–1926), Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842–1901), Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866–1915).

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See Aurobindo Ghose [1872–1950], Speeches, Calcutta, Arya, 1948, p. 7; S. Hay (ed.), Sources of Indian Tradition, vol. 2, New York, Columbia University Press, 1988, p. 128; J.R. McLane (ed.), The Political Awakening in India, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1970, p. 56; and Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Writings and Speeches, Madras, Ganesh, 1922, pp. 55–57. The protagonists were Lajput Rai (1865–1928), Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838–94) and Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920). Tilak urged his followers to burn alive thieves who enter your house. This included attempts to assassinate the Viceroy and the murder of twenty-one policemen. Ma Ma Lay, Not Out of Hate, Athens, OH, State Ohio University Monographs, 1991, p. 69. Ma Tin Hlaing (alias Ma Ma Lay) sets her novel in the 1930s. She describes how Thakin Htun Ok arrived ‘wearing a homespun jacket and a pink gaung-baung’, a reference to Dobama’s adoption of Burmese ‘homespun’ clothing (equivalent of swadeshi). SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod: General Letter, 9 January 1935. The Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, Maritime Monographs and Reports no. 7, Greenwich, National Maritime Museum, 1973, pp. 21–22. Clerks were Burmans and sweepers were Madrassis or South Indians. On Express Steamers all positions above Fourth Engineers were Europeans, deck and engine-room crew were Eastern Bengalis, etc., see also A. McCrae and A. Prentice, Irrawaddy Flotilla, Paisley, James Paton, 1978, pp. 127–128. After 1918, the Company increased British staff so that pre-war employment practices could continue. See also T.A.B. Corley, A History of the Burmah Oil Company, 1886–1924 and 1924–66, London, Heinemann, 1988 and A.C. Pointon, The Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation Ltd, 1863–1963, Southampton, The Millbrook Press, 1964. No mention is made of Burmans in a senior management position. See C. Goscha, Vietnam or Indo-China: Setting Indo-China into Motion Together, Copenhagen, NIAS, 1995. Like Burmans, ‘Annamese clerks ran the bureaucracies of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.’ American Baptist Foreign Mission Society/Cornell University Library Rare and Manuscript Collections/Records # 4424, Miss Alice Thayer, 1 March 1931. U Ottama b. Paw Htun in Arakan; son of traders; educated at an AV school; a novice in Pakokku at fifteen; went to Calcutta aged sixteen in 1904 and travelled extensively in India, Egypt, Europe, Japan and Southeast Asia; he returned to Burma in 1911 and collaborated with Ba Pe and Hla Pe of Thuriya Press and U Kyaw Yan of the Burma Star in Mandalay. It is thought that U Ottama was imprisoned because of his links with GCBA. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod General Letter, and Missionaries Committee Minutes, 6–14 January 1921. M.K. Gandhi, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, New Delhi, Government of India Press, 1958–78, vol. 24, p. 227. P.M. Milne, Selected Short Stories of Thein Pe Myint, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University, Southeast Asia Studies Programme, 1973. In India there were Hindus, Muslims, Jainians, Sikhs, Zoroastrians and Christians. E.g. the Anti-Mohammedan riots of 1938 around the Soorati Bara Bazaar in Rangoon. See Smith, Religion and Politics in Burma, pp. 39–43, and U Maung Maung, From Sangha to Laity: Nationalist Movements of Burma 1920–1940, New Delhi, South Asia Books, 1980, p. 35. The Dyarchy Constitution of 1923 shared power between the Governor and native Burman ministers. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod Minutes, 5 November 1926. E. Michael Mendelson, Sangha and State in Burma: A Study of Monastic Sectarianlsm and Leadership, ed. John P. Ferguson, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1975, p. 204. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Walters–Johnson, 6 December 1929 and 30 Jan 1930.

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American Baptist Foreign Mission Society/Cornell University Library/Rare and Manuscript Collections//Records # 4424, Miss Alice Thayer, 1 March 1931. She told her family that the price of rice was Rs 160 per 100 baskets, plus tax. At harvest time the price dropped to Rs 80. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Young–Noble, 2 June 1930, and 2 February 1931; mainly the Thamadawzay area of Mandalay. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod: General Letter, 15 January 1930. American Baptist Foreign Mission Society/Cornell University Library/Rare and Manuscript Collections/Records # 4424, 21 April 1932. Alice Thayer said the play was about love and forgiveness. The pongyi shouted that they did not want to hear about that, ‘they’ve got love and forgiveness in Japan now’. This was the same Young who had been master of the mv Hilda and had roared between jungle villages on his motorbike-and-sidecar. See SOAS/MMS/ Uncatalogued/MRP2/Firth Papers: Memoirs of Harold C. Willans. Willans first arrived in Pakokku in 1927, after travelling for five weeks by sea, railway and river steamer. Willans was greeted on the jetty by Young, who glared at his pocket-watch and barked, ‘you’re late’. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence /FBN2/Young–Noble, 28 February 1931. Young dismissed drawings produced by the distinguished architect Mr May for the new Wesley Church in Mandalay, as a ‘Chinese temple – potty, futile and ludicrous’. He complained that he had to humour ‘an autocratic, selfwilled, ex-Roman Catholic lady who is paying the total cost of the building’. See also SOAS/WMMS/Uncatalogued/MRP2/Firth Papers: Memoirs. Another story involved Rev. John Leigh. In 1932 he planned to meet his fiancée, Miss Jennie Dawson, for a last romantic supper on an isolated railway station. She was returning home on furlough and the train would stop there for a ‘dinner-break’ on its way to Rangoon. Young insisted that missionaries should seek permission before leaving their circuits even for a short time. Other Chairmen waived the rule. Leigh was uncharacteristically law-abiding on this occasion. He sought the Chairman’s permission to leave his circuit for the evening. Young refused. Leigh went anyway, and, as the couple dined by candlelight, Young stormed onto the station, furious that his orders had been disobeyed. J. Gallagher, ‘Nationalisms and the Crisis of Empire, 1919–1922’, Modern Asian Studies, 15 3 (1981), 355. The war and the crises in Ireland and India had overstretched Britain militarily and economically. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/MRP2/Young–Noble, 9 May and 2 June 1930. Sir John Simon’s Commission looked at the working of the Dyarchy arrangement and advised on (a) whether Burma should be separated from India and (b) whether Burmese control of central government should be allowed. The Government favoured Separation. Burmese opinion was ambivalent. The major nationalist parties boycotted the controversial Government of Burma Act of 1935 which came into effect in April 1937. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/MRP2/Young–Noble, 28 June 1930. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/MRP2/Young–Noble, 14 November 1930. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/MRP2/Young–Noble, 14 November 1930; Noble– Young, 15 December 1930. On 22 December 1930 rebels attacked villages in the Tharrawaddy District. It spread to Insein District. On 31 December a battalion of the Burma Rifles dispersed the rebels. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/MRP2/Young–Noble, 2 February, 8 May, 24 May and 9 June 1931. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/MRP2/Young–Noble, 2 February 1931. See Ian Brown, ‘The Economic Crisis and Rebellion in Rural Burma in the Early 1930s’, in Growth, Distribution and Political Change: Asia and the Wider World, ed. Ryoshin Minami, Kwan S. Kim and Malcolm Falkus, London, Macmillan, 1999, pp. 143–157. Small landowners, liable for land taxes and with insufficient cash reserves, were hardest hit, not labourers or tenant cultivators. James C. Scott’s

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assertion that the rural labourers were worst off does not hold water. Adas’s analysis of the effects of British laissez-faire policies is still valuable. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/MRP2/Young–Noble, 9 June 1931. The Origin and Causes of the Burma Rebellion (1930–32), Rangoon, Government Printing and Stationery, 1934. See Parimal Ghosh, Brave Men of the Hills. Resistance and Rebellion in Burma 1825–1932, Honolulu, University of Hawai; Press, 2000, pp. 147–149, Patricia Herbert, The Hsaya San Rebellion (1930–1932) Reappraised, Clayton, Victoria, Monash University, Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Working Paper 27, 1982, p. 7, Michael Adas, Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 201, and James C. Scott, Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1976, p. 99. See Brown, A Colonial Economy in Crisis, Chapter 5. Also, Ian Brown, ‘Tax Remission and Tax Burden in Rural Lower Burma during the Economic Crisis of the Early 1930s’, Modern Asian Studies, 332 (1999), 383–403. Robert Solomon, ‘Saya San and the Burmese Rebellion’, Modern Asian Studies, 3 (1969), 209–223, together with pre-war commentators like Maurice Collis and C.V. Warren, accepted the inadequate findings of the Government Reports of 1931 and 1934 which dismissed Hsaya San as a fake ‘king-emperor’ determined to overthrow the Government. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/MRP2/Young–Noble, 10 August and 5 October 1931. Ghosh, Brave Men of the Hills, p. 171. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/MRP2/Report on Mandalay Girls High School, December 1931. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/MRP2/Burma District Synod: General Letter, 13 January 1932. Taylor, The State in Burma, pp. 148–152. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod: General Letter, 15 January 1936. See Daw Khin Yi, The Dobama Movement in Burma (1930–1938), Ithaca, NY, Cornell Southeast Asia Program, p. 14. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod: General Letter, 13 January 1937. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Chapman–Noble, 13 March and 6 September 1937, and Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod: General Letter, 12 January 1938. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Chapman–Noble, 4 August 1938. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Chapman–Noble, 28 August 1938. SOAS/MMS/Minutes, Burma District Synod: General Letter, 15 August 1938. Maung Maung, From Sangha to Laity, pp. 183–184. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod: General Letter, 11 January 1939. Taylor, The State in Burma, pp. 204–207, and Khin Yi, The Dobama Movement in Burma. U Thein Pe Myint, ‘Oil’, in Selected Short Stories of Thein Pc Myint, trans. Patricia M. Milne, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Department of Asian Studies, 1973. Khin Yi, The Dobama Movement in Burma, pp. 58–60. Hugh Vincent Shepherd, BA b. Cardiff 1891; Didsbury College; army officer World War I; Richmond College 1918; Burma 1924–42; Chairman of the District ‘in exile’ 1944; contracted leprosy; Church in South India 1947–51; d. 1967. Paul Wyeth Webb, MBE, BA b. Oakleigh 1900; Handsworth College; thirteen years in Burma; Toc. H. Assistant Commissioner for North West Europe 1942; d. 21 May 1961. Anglican missionaries had worked in Yenangyaung for many years. The Burmah Oil Corporation invited the Wesleyan Mission to look after the ‘Union Church’ in Chauk in 1932. There was a substantial congregation of Europeans, Anglo-Indians and Indians, also Burmans of all denominations.

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George Eric Firth b. London 1903; Richmond College; Burma 1933–49; Chairman of the District after the war; Secretary of the South India Society; d. 1985. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Chauk Circuit Report, December 1936. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Chauk Circuit Report, 1939. SOAS/WMMS/Uncatalogued/MRP4/Firth Papers: interview with Paul Edington. See also David Donnison, Last of the Guardians: A Story of Burma, Britain and a Family, Newtown, Superscript, 2005, pp. 103–105; Donnison paints a dismal picture of life among Europeans in Chauk. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Chauk Women’s Work Report, 1939. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6A/Firth Papers: Burma District Report, 1941. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Reed–Childe, 7 September 1954. It implied criticism of Firth and Pepper who was the current incumbent in Chauk. Taylor, The State in Burma, p. 214. The Dobama Asiayone wanted to abolish the maistry system. Jan Becka, The National Liberation Movement in Burma during the Japanese Occupation Period (1941–1945), Prague, Oriental Institute in Academia, 1983, vol. 2, p. 38. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6A/Firth Papers: Burma District Report, 1939. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Chauk/Circuit Report, 1939. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6A/Firth Papers: Burma District Report, 1941.

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Social issues

At first the missionaries were so preoccupied with their own internal difficulties that they were reluctant to engage with problems of others. When they finally made a start, they chose issues that offended their own proclivities rather than the most urgent needs of Burmese society. They certainly shied away from the core excesses of colonial policy – pluralism, capitalist exploitation and arbitrary government. Some tricky moral issues intruded into the Mission and demanded their attention. A married catechist, Maung Kin, was dismissed in 1897 for writing letters enticing a female teacher into sin.1 In 1904 another catechist ‘returned to Buddha’ and a promising young man fell ‘into deadly sin’. In the same year a young teacher stole money from her school.2 In 1916 the oldest catechist fell after ‘months of hypocritical life’, and a charming Burmese Wesleyan girl in Kyaukse was seduced by a rascally Englishman ‘who picks up his living at the racecourse’.3 Initially, local Buddhist pongyis looked on benignly when Buddhists converted to Christianity, and the missionaries tolerated Christians who lived with their Buddhist families. However, attitudes hardened on both sides after 1920. Solomon Kodicara, one of the Singhalese catechists, was caught in a moral maze. He had married a Burmese Christian lady who already had a daughter. In 1921 when the girl was eighteen years old she married a nice young Burman Buddhist. Kodicara held the reception at his house. It was a happy and innocent occasion, but it sparked off a furious rumpus in the Church. The Missionary Society decided to punish Kodicara (quite viciously) for allowing his stepdaughter to consort with a Buddhist.4 Rev. Maung Pai Bwin was another example. In 1925 he married a Buddhist girl, Ma Ngwe Sein.5 She became a Christian, but just before the wedding they had sexual intercourse. The consciencestricken Maung Pai Bwin – so honest and so naïve – confessed his ‘sin’ to the Chairman. Bestall hauled Pai Bwin before a ramshackle [ 61 ]

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ecclesiastical court which reprimanded him and extended his probation in order to encourage others ‘in this country notorious for the laxity of its morals’.6 The moral problems never seemed to end. In December 1934 Rev. U Khant stole the carol-singing money from the church choir and gambled it away with Buddhist friends in a notorious gaming house in Pakokku.7 Synod did not accept his explanation that he had gone to preach the Gospel to sinners. Rs 20 per month was deducted from his salary until the money was repaid.8 Rev. Maung Pyaw was suspended in October 1937 for living with a Buddhist woman and failing to stand up ‘against Buddhist influences’.9 Rev. U An was a thoroughly bad egg. He had an ‘immoral affair’ with an Indian sweeper’s wife who followed him around from circuit to circuit causing trouble wherever she went. Rev. U An also stole money from the Church in Pakokku to finance a ‘loan-shark’ business from which he pocketed a tidy profit. In the end his congregation refused to accept communion ‘from his hands’ and he was dismissed.10 Even the Wesleyan star turn, Rev. U Po Tun, got into hot water.11 When his wife, Ma Chit, was imprisoned for fraud, she tried to implicate Po Tun. His name was only cleared after sordid divorce proceedings and a protracted paternity dispute were resolved in 1933.12 Scores of ordinary church members went through similar traumas and the missionaries regarded every Christian–Buddhist marriage as an accident waiting to happen. When at last the missionaries plucked up courage to venture into the surrounding streets and bazaars, they tilted at windmills, peripheral problems. One of these was a bitter little colonial skirmish over mixedrace education. There were many Eurasian children in Mandalay and miscegenation was not confined to a single social class. Indeed many mixed-race children were doted upon. An Irrawaddy Flotilla captain and a patrician army lieutenant were just two of several Wesleyan members who had fathered Eurasian children. Colonial opinion frowned on the practice. Winston had harsh words to say about the Englishman who ‘surrenders himself to his appetites, and foolishly surrounds himself with ties that are degrading’. He was particularly annoyed when Eurasian children became ‘a charge on missionary bodies for their education, out of sheer pity for their English descent’ and he feared they would swell the ranks of ‘poor whites’.13 In Pakokku Eurasian males were excluded from the English club and everywhere they faced prejudice from both European and Burmese employers.14 Deep moral ambiguities lay behind a Wesleyan proposal to set up a Eurasian Girls School.15 Eurasian boys were not a problem. They were [ 62 ]

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packed off to expensive boarding schools in England, surreptitiously placed in mission schools in Upper Burma or disowned by their fathers and left to run around as urchins. There is a tantalising glimpse of one Eurasian boy called William Sellick in Mandalay. At Wesley Boys High School he became ‘a leader of the young Christians’. In 1913, aged twenty-one, he became a candidate for the Wesleyan ministry.16 His father, a major in the Indian Medical Service, was a brilliant and charming man who ‘followed the custom of so many men out here and kept a Burmese mistress’. Major Sellick eventually abandoned William’s mother and ‘killed himself with drink’. Had it not been for Wesley Boys High School, William would have succumbed to ‘the usual fate of such children’, a life of ‘utter moral degradation’. William Sellick was said to be a Burman ‘by habits and inclination’ and he took ‘a leader’s place among the Burmans’.17 But he was never mentioned again, so it is not known what happened to him. In the 1920s Mr Justice Sheldon Pratt and his Burmese wife treated their Anglo-Burmese son and daughter in very different ways.18 Captain Waymouth was a prominent Wesleyan in Pakokku. He rather furtively paid fees for his illegitimate Eurasian son who was a pupil at the Wesley Boys High School.19 The Roman Catholic Convent was the only school in Mandalay that catered specifically for Eurasian girls. It was heavily oversubscribed and became an instant success. Bestall was incandescent as he watched parents converting ‘to Rome’ in order to get their daughters into the school. Innocent little Eurasian schoolgirls suddenly became bargaining chips in a tawdry interdenominational war. Bestall launched a furious campaign to persuade the Missionary Committee to provide funds for a Wesleyan Eurasian girls’ school in Mandalay.20 It was, he said in 1901, only because of their weak Bishop that the Anglicans had not opened a similar school. He was apoplectic when Protestant Eurasian girls at the Convent were given ‘little crosses’ and ‘within a few days, all the rest follows’.21 All Bestall could do was to provide a parlour in the Mission House where Miss Vickers taught seventeen well-to-do little Eurasian girls.22 His gloom deepened in 1906 when he learned that the American Baptists were about to open ‘a Girls Eurasian Boarding School at a cost rumoured to be Rs.30000’.23 Guilt and hypocrisy were the main ingredients in the Eurasian question. Henriques explains that Eurasians suffered rejection by both ‘native and ruler’, although they preferred to be treated as Europeans.24 Gaikwad says that Anglo-Indians were ‘prisoners’ of their ‘origin and socio-cultural development’, trapped ‘between two cultural worlds’.25 The missionaries considered Anglo-Burmese children to be a cut above ‘native’ children and worthy of more favourable treatment. In 1902 Synod described Eurasians as ‘our own fellow subjects’.26 Wesley Girls [ 63 ]

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School was considered to be ‘too rough’ for Eurasian girls which is why Miss Vickers’s little ‘dame school’ was billed as a school for ‘better class’ children.27 The Eurasian issue was very potent but only for a short time. After 1910, the subject was never mentioned again. Unsuspecting Burmans who idled away their time in the teashops of Mandalay and Monywa soon discovered what working men in the pubs of Manchester and Leeds had known for years – that the war against gambling, drunkenness, sloth and sexual immorality was close to Wesleyan hearts.28 In the early days Winston had railed against the ‘colonial sins’ of ‘concubinage, whoredom and adultery’, which were attributed to the ‘old Adam’.29 Younger evangelicals like Skinner and Walters were more understanding. They conceded that Western decadence also played its part. There was no doubt, too, that local conditions created local evils. Pyawbwe was an example. It was a byword for the tacky worldliness of its mix of rootless Burmans and Shans. There was criminality everywhere. The Wesleyans were particularly angered when ‘houses of ill-fame’ peddled their wares near the school.30 Gambling was a national problem. In 1913 Synod complained about the colonial Government’s practice of circulating state lottery tickets to schoolboys and teachers via the post office. Victory was won in 1918 when the Government ended its sweepstakes and lotteries.31 Synod was never happier than when worrying about ‘the increasing havoc’ caused by alcohol. It urged the Missionary Society to lean on the Government and invited ‘Christian and non-Christian’ religions to join in a common fight against alcohol.32 Astonishingly, a Buddhist High School teacher in Pakokku, Saya Ba, accepted the invitation and joined ‘with Christians to combat social ills’. He became the star turn in a series of band-of-hope-style rallies staged in 1916. It was a rare example of collaboration with ‘Buddhists in this work of public service’.33 One other social problem was entirely new. Wayward Burmese adolescents were addicted to films. They may have picked up the bad habit from the missionaries’ magic-lantern shows, where mesmerised audiences gawped at cartoon Bible stories. By 1916, far more exciting sagas than the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son were being screened in makeshift cinemas in Mandalay. Young men flocked to see them.34 The missionaries became so alarmed in 1917 that they urged the Lieutenant Governor to tighten film censorship.35 Twelve years later Walters was still calling on the censors to lessen ‘drunk scenes’, curtail ‘amorous ones’ and cut out ‘immodest and suggestive dancing’. He felt they were designed to ‘undermine British prestige’ and to make ‘sinister suggestions to the Eastern mind’. ‘Movies’ exploded the myth [ 64 ]

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of European moral superiority and it was feared they might expose women missionaries to advances from inflamed cinema-goers. In this sense uncensored films posed greater threats to European security than to Burmese morality.36 These crusades enabled the missionaries to deflect the spotlight away from the dark crevices of Western society and onto Burmese moral frailties. Hitherto it had been impossible for the missionaries to enter the private domains of Burmese religious and family life. Now, the ‘public arenas’ of the cinema, gambling den and bar were much more easily infiltrated. The missionaries were also very interested in certain aspects of public health, but their preoccupations were extremely selective. Leprosy melted hearts in Victorian England. Once when Winston visited the Mandalay Leper Home, a mutilated, half-blind woman was lying on the ground, beating her hand and quietly singing Christian hymns. Just around the corner, Ma Ma Lay, a little leper girl of eight, sang ‘Yes Jesus Loves Me’.37 It was the sort of sentimental scene that caused Wesleyans at home to reach for their purses. ‘Lepers are very numerous in Mandalay’ yet ‘nothing has been done for them,’ Synod noted in 1890.38 In April 1890 Winston suggested that a Leper Home would ‘remove the prejudice of both Europeans and Burmese’.39 Buddhists had done nothing ‘to relieve these sufferers, beyond the tossing of a little copper coin on which to feed their dire misery’.40 It would be good publicity if people could ‘see that we are what we pretend to be, men really full of zeal for the welfare of our fellow creatures’. Although leprosy brought the lives of individual sufferers crashing down, it was not the most important health problem in Burma. It was a political issue. Winston wanted to pre-empt a Catholic Bishop who was planning a large Leper Home in Mandalay, and he promised that the Wesleyan ‘Home will be simply Christian and Protestant, nothing more’.41 Denominational rivalry fuelled Winston’s demands for funds, but surprisingly the Missionary Committee would not ‘give the least countenance’ to the scheme. So the Leper Home had to be built without Missionary Society money. The Chief Commissioner of Burma promised land and grants-in-aid.42 Letters signed by eminent officials were sent to wealthy individuals and organisations throughout Burma and Rs 6,500 rolled in immediately.43 The Municipality of Prome guaranteed to ‘supply’ forty lepers, and to pay their full costs. The National Leprosy Fund sent £80, and the Mission to Lepers gave generously.44 In January 1891 a ward was opened for fifteen patients.45 Winston and his successors were always careful to emphasise that the Committee had not contributed ‘a single penny’.46 [ 65 ]

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It is not certain why organisations and individuals gave money so willingly, but in 1860 a report by the Royal College of Physicians of London had challenged the ‘biblical associations’ between leprosy ‘disfigurement, dirt and isolation’.47 Instead leprosy highlighted an embarrassing public-health problem. Once a rural disease, it had come into towns because of slum conditions.48 When a person contracted leprosy, ‘the rest of society suddenly becomes blind and deaf, as if the leprosy patient has ceased to exist’.49 In 1893 there were estimated to be 3,504 lepers in Upper Burma, one in every thousand of the population.50 Leprosy was a great leveller, and from time to time European victims were admitted to the Mandalay Leper Home. In 1893, Robert Thompson, a fifty-nine-year-old English member of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Rangoon, was admitted to the Mandalay Home. He died there three months later.51 Rev. F. E. Skinner recalled that the beautiful young daughter of Mr Plunkett, a European Forestry Officer based in Mandalay, contracted leprosy in the 1920s, as did the daughter of Dr Roy, the surgeon in charge of the Mandalay Leper Home.52 Mr Bunn, an Anglo-Indian printer, who worked ‘with the remains of his fingers’, also became an inmate.53 It was believed that the Home could become a valuable evangelical agency, and so it did in 1893 when an English doctor saved the life of a patient, Maung Ba, by amputating his leg. Maung Ba immediately converted to Christianity together with eight other inmates. Thirty-one others followed in 1895. They held daily prayer-meetings which were announced by a gong.54 From 1897 the Home was listed separately in the District Church membership returns, revealing that 67 per cent of adult baptisms and 62 per cent of the members ‘on trial’ were lepers.55 Leprosy work entered a ‘stage of anxiety’ in 1902 when the Roman Catholics built a state of the art leper home next door to the Wesleyans. They spared no expense and Bestall feared they would cream off all available government grants. The resident staff in the Roman Catholic Home included two priests and seven nuns. The Wesleyans simply could not ‘compete with this wealth’.56 Nevertheless, it remained their fond hope that the Leper Home would spearhead a membership drive in the District. However, it was too much of an enclave and evoked ambiguous and sometimes hostile reactions. Patients in the early stages of leprosy showed little interest in Christianity and most patients who converted did so when they were in the terminal stages of the disease.57 Nevertheless the Leper Home made a major contribution to Methodism in Upper Burma. Ma Nan Paw, an influential Bible Woman, died there in 1909.58 The mother of Rev. U Po Tun (the first Burmese Chairman of the District) was a patient, and as an ‘untainted’ child Po Tun was separated from her and placed as a boarder [ 66 ]

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in Mandalay Girls School. He went on to attend the Boys High School and Bradford pointed out that ‘had it not been for the Mission’, Po Tun would have ‘caught the disease by contact’ and become ‘just another miserable leper beggar’.59 Two new wards, a women’s dispensary, a hospital assistant’s bungalow and a large storage tank for water were built in 1911.60 The Bailey Hostel for the untainted children of lepers and a ward for male patients were completed in 1912. In 1905 Miss Butt began to supervise leper women and ‘untainted’ children, a task she performed until 1925. There were already 130 patients in the Home by 1898.61 Donations flowed in as the Home’s reputation for clinical excellence grew. In a report written in 1938 by the Director of Public Health, Major Bozman of the Indian Medical Service (IMS), and John Lowe of the British Leprosy Relief Organization, the Home was described as ‘spotlessly clean’, ‘bright’, providing ‘first-class medical attention’ and excellent arrangements for children. It was considered to be worthy of emulation by other leper homes in Burma.62 In 1918 the Lieutenant Governor, Sir Reginald Craddock, wrote in the visitors’ book, ‘This institution is doing excellent and charitable work.’63 Occasionally the Leper Home ran into local difficulties. In 1920 fiftysix inmates were struck off the Wesleyan Church membership list for joining ‘fraudulently’, although it is not clear exactly why or how.64 In 1941 male inmates demanded the dismissal of the Medical Director, Dr Roy, ‘on the grounds of his harsh treatment’.65 The Leper Home became a refugee camp during World War II, and RAF planes were instructed not to bomb it.66 After the war the Government prevailed upon Synod to reopen the Mandalay Leper Home. The decision was made easier because the buildings were undamaged.67 The Home reopened on 20 May 1946 with eighty-seven patients, and Dr Jamaldin was appointed as Medical Officer.68 Shortages of medicines and food limited further expansion, but an occupational therapy unit, library and games rooms were opened and a woman patient started a school for leper children and illiterate adult patients. Nine adults were baptised in St Luke’s Church in 1947. The District Report for 1946 looked ‘forward to the time when we can admit many more sufferers’.69 By 1948 there were 175 patients, 38 had been admitted during the year, 23 patients had been discharged (some for misconduct) and 6 had died.70 The number of patients had again risen to 205 in 1949, and 420 outpatients were being treated each quarter. The outlook seemed very bright.71 When the Burmese Prime Minister, U Nu, visited the Home in 1958, he wrote in the visitors’ book, ‘Only Christians can do this work.’72 In the 1960s Dr Jamaldin and his distinguished Methodist Physiotherapist, [ 67 ]

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Kenneth Kin Thein, steered the Home through a remarkable renaissance.73 It celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary in 1965, just before all leprosy work was nationalised by General Ne Win.74 Leprosy was not the only public-health concern in Upper Burma. Indeed it does not merit a mention in Judith Richell’s excellent survey of disease in colonial Burma.75 Before 1942 plague, cholera, smallpox, typhoid and enteric fever were far more devastating, and epidemics swept through Upper Burmese towns during most ‘cold’ seasons. 1905–6 was a bad year. Measles and cholera hit Pakokku and in Mandalay fifty people died daily from plague.76 Bestall visited the infected quarter several times a week, and every school in the city, except the Wesleyan Girls School, had to close.77 In January 1907 cholera swept through Monywa and while ‘the pestilence held power’ Sheldon had to read the burial service daily. Plague returned to Mandalay in 1907. The city half emptied and ‘trade suffered’.78 Two girls in the school contracted the disease and the number of ‘dead rats’ in the school premises ‘grew alarmingly’.79 In 1909, plague, cholera and smallpox severely reduced attendances at the Wesleyan schools.80 Bestall drove through ‘a lonely street’ in Mandalay early one morning in March 1909 as it ‘filled with a woman’s wail’ from ‘a poor Burmese widow whose husband had just died from the plague’. It ‘brought tears to our eyes’.81 In November 1909 Bisseker arrived in Pyawbwe to a ‘scene of hopeless desolation’.82 Everyone had to leave the town for a month. ‘Some houses had been burnt to the ground. Others had been stripped of their roofs’ and very ‘few people wandered in the streets’. A month later, ‘there was an attack of cholera’.83 In 1910 Monywa ‘was emptied of its inhabitants’ and villagers ‘fled into the fields’ because of plague. A schoolboy died after being ‘carefully tended to the last’ by his Christian boarding master.84 Kyaukse was hit by plague in 1910 and wore ‘a forsaken and dilapidated appearance’. People fled to the jungle, and roofs were torn off in ‘a crusade against the rats’. Three schoolboys died, and the work of the Mission was disrupted.85 In 1918 epidemic influenza or ‘war fever’ caused 13,000 deaths in Mandalay, and many more people died from pneumonia.86 Chapman and his house-servant suffered from a bout of cholera during the very bad epidemic of 1918 in Pakokku.87 A schoolboy died in a particularly bad outbreak of plague in Mandalay in 1921.88 In 1900 the missionaries asked the Missionary Society to send a missionary doctor.89 Lack of money and personnel prevented it from happening. Medical centres for Burmese people were perhaps not very high on the agendas of most missionaries. They and their families [ 68 ]

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were treated in European hospitals by the best Indian Medical Service surgeons and they were prepared to make the round trip of 722 miles to Rangoon if necessary, as Sheldon did in 1926 to visit a dentist.90 In the same year, when a dog bit Mrs Skinner and her children, they all shot off to the Pasteur Institute in Rangoon to check for rabies.91 Very occasionally missionaries or their families contracted one of the epidemic diseases, but they were always carefully nursed back to health.92 Ordinary Burmans were not so fortunate. In 1911 Bradford described the hospital in Pakokku, a ‘congested town, which is very unsanitary’. There was only one very small government hospital which was totally inadequate, especially during the annual epidemics of plague, cholera, smallpox and measles. A single ‘third-class military surgeon’ struggled to look after several ‘hospitals (including Pakokku) scattered over a district of 6,000 square miles’. For most of the time the hospital in Pakokku was run by a few ‘imperfectly qualified’ ‘Madrassi subordinates’ who extorted money from patients. The wards were ‘repulsively dirty and incompetent’ and the Burmese doctors had not ‘the slightest pretensions to sound medical knowledge. They never attend at a childbirth and would be of no use if they did.’ The hospital was ‘profoundly distrusted’ by local people and Bradford was so horrified by ‘the things people suffer’ that he could not bring himself to describe ‘the ghastly and pathetic sights’ he witnessed.93 Bradford passionately urged the Missionary Society to send a medical missionary immediately. He warned that if they did not, he would raise the money himself and recruit Christian-trained Burmese nurses. Out of the blue, a ‘generous friend’ donated money for a doctor’s salary and expenses. In September 1915 Dr Percy Stocks and his wife arrived to begin working as medical missionaries.94 It was hoped that Stocks might be the advance party of the ‘heavy artillery of the missionary army’.95 A fine house was provided for Dr and Mrs Stocks in the beautiful town of Kalaw in the Shan Hills, and they arrived well equipped with a touring tent, folding piano, medicine chest and two bicycles.96 But things went badly wrong. Mrs Stocks seemed unhappy and Dr Stocks, previously so keen and amenable, began to complain about his salary, accommodation and everything else. A day or so after they arrived in Kalaw, Stocks resigned and the two of them boarded a boat and steamed back to England.97 It was a horrible mistake and led to great deal of soul-searching. Sheldon had been appointed as acting Chairman because Phillips had suspected plague. He rightly predicted that it would put back ‘medical work for many years to come’.98 It brought to an abrupt end any plans for medical work in Upper Burma proper, although several decades later an excellent Methodist hospital was established in Tahan in the Upper Chindwin.99 [ 69 ]

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Notes 1 2 3

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4

5 6 7

8 9 10 11

12

13 14 15

16 17 18

19 20

SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Burma District Synod, 6 January 1897. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Burma District Synod, 29 December 1904. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Kalaw Circuit Report, December 1916 and SOAS/ WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Young–Goudie, 27 March 1922 SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Bestall–Goudie, 11 June, 5 July, 9 August 1921. Skinner accused Kodicara of ‘slackness’ and he was found guilty; although Bestall was disappointed that Kodicara had not led ‘his step-daughter to Jesus Christ’, he was unhappy about Skinner’s handling of the affair. Goudie was appalled by Kodicara’s behaviour and angry that Bestall had not dealt with him more harshly; Goudie froze Kodicara’s pension and only released it after much pleading. Rev. Pai Bwin b. 1896; educated in mission school; ordained 1926; retired due to poor eyesight in 1958; kindly, wise, reliable, humble: prone to procrastinate to avoid hurting people; d. 1964. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Special Session of Synod, January 1926. Rev. U Khant, minister 1930; married Ma Mary; they had two children. He left her and the ministry in 1937; lived near Toungyi with a Karen Christian woman to whom he was married (bigamously) for seventeen years; they had seven children; in 1957 he returned to Monywa; preached, taught and organised relief during the fire of 1957. Reconciled with his first wife and children; d. December 1957. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod, ‘minor meeting’, 16 August 1935. U Khant stole money in 1933 and again in 1934. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Chapman–Noble, 30 October 1937. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Chapman–Noble, 23 June 1938. The young Maung An’s parents had been Wesleyan; he entered the ministry in 1924 aged fortyfour. U Po Tun b. Shwebo 1888; found by Winston as a child in a pagoda with his mother. She became an inmate in the Leper Home and Po Tun attended Mandalay Girls High School then Boys High School; entered the ministry in 1916; ordained in 1938; Superintendent, Mandalay Circuit, 1939; led Methodists during Japanese occupation; first Burmese Chairman of the District 1948; visited UK 1951; his last public appearance was at the seventy-fifth anniversary of Wesley Church Mandalay; d. 1963. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Walters–Goudie, 7 August 1924, Shepherd– Noble, 13 March 1924 and Synod Minutes, January 1924. Ma Chit was a Baptist who forged Po Tun’s signature in a post office savings book; the birth certificate proved that Maung Thein Maung was the father of her son. Winston, Four Years in Upper Burma, pp. 228–229. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Pakokku Circuit Report, 31 December 1911. Orwell, Burmese Days, p. 17. Eric Blair, alias George Orwell, Indian Imperial Police in Burma 1922–28; in his excoriating portrayal of Kyauktada, he mentions ‘two Eurasians named Mr Francis and Mr Samuel, the sons of an American Baptist missionary and a Roman Catholic missionary respectively’. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1-2/Burma District Synod, 6–10 January 1913. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Bradford–Hartley, 15 January 1913. SOAS/WMMS/Uncatalogued/MRP4/3(a)/Skinner Papers; Mr Sheldon Pratt, Deputy Chief, Justice, lived in Mandalay with his Burmese wife ‘Winnie’. Dick, their son, went to Malvern College a boarding school in England (a ‘dark-skinned Englishman’). Their daughter, Mollie, was a pupil at the Anglican School in Monywa. Mrs Pratt’s mother, ‘an illiterate jungle woman from Yinmabin’, used to squat outside their elegant house ‘over a plate of curry, eating with her fingers’. By innuendo Captain Waymouth was compared with English managers of the Bombay Burmah Trading Company who kept their Burmese mistresses, ‘out of the way in the jungle’. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Burma District Synod, January 1899, and Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Olver, 28 July 1899.

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26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

Bestall referred to Roman Catholics as ‘Rome’. Miss Agnes Vickers, first Wesleyan woman missionary, married Rev. W. Vickery – she only had to change ‘y’ in her name. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 19 August 1906. F. Henriques, Children of Caliban: Miscegenation, London, Secker & Warburg, 1974, p. 44. V.R. Gaikwad, The Anglo-Indians: A Study in the Problems and Processes Involved in Emotional and Cultural Integration, London, Asia Publishing House, 1967. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Synod General Letter, 7 January 1902. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN/Synod General Letter, 11 January 1901; the Government promised Rs 3,000 for extension to Eurasian girls at Mandalay Girls High School. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/General Synod Letter, 6 January 1909; e.g. ‘lying, gambling, impurity and intemperance’; Synod Minutes, 3–9 January 1909, singles out ‘the growing prevalence of gambling’. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Walton, 9 October 1889. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Pyawbwe Circuit Reports, December 1909 and 1911; Pyawbwe is a town ‘surrounded by monuments of Buddhism’ which had little effect on the morality of the people. ‘Gambling is rampant; houses of ill fame abound; robberies occur almost nightly, there are always victims of assault in the hospital.’ SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1-2/Synod Pastoral Session, 9–13 January 1919. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1-2/Minutes of the Pastoral Session of Synod, 6–8 Jan 1916, and Burma District Synod, 3–6 January 1917. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1-2/Pakokku Circuit Report, 31 December 1916. Saya Ba lectured at Pakokku High School, vernacular schools and the Police School. Larkin, ‘The Self-Conscious Censor’. The British authorities imposed strict controls under the Cinematograph Act 1918, concerned about portrayals of white females and derogatory representations of the British. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1-2/Burma District Synod, 3–6 January 1917. The censor was based in Bombay. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Walters–Johnson, 2 November 1929. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Olver, 1 August 1895. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Annual District Meeting, 7 February 1890. F. Deaville Walker, The Land of the Gold Pagoda, London, The Cargate Press, 1939, p. 80. Based on letters from Winston dated 2 April 1890; now missing from WMMS archive. Walker, Land of the Gold Pagoda, p. 81. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Walton, 12 March 1890; the two medical superintendents were Dr Jamaldin and Dr Roy. The Government provided a site of over 5 acres. It included a personal donation of Rs. 100 from the Chief Commissioner. The Prince of Wales, President of the National Leprosy Fund, secured the Fund’s donation. See Walker, Land of the Gold Pagoda. In 1893 there were fifty-three leper inmates (twenty-one females and thirty-two males) and sixteen deaths. Two successful amputations were performed – a big toe and a leg. Lepers suffered severe pain because of ulcers. See Michael Worboys, ‘The Colonial World as Mission and Mandate: Leprosy and Empire, 1900–1940’, Osiris, 15 (2000), 213. V.S. Upadhyay, Socio-Cultural Implications of Leprosy: An Essay in Medical Anthropology, Calcutta, Maitryee Publications, 1988, p. 10. See S.D. Gokhale, Valley of Shadows: Problem of Leprosy in India, Bombay, Popular Prakashan, 1979. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Report to Burma District Synod, 1893; quote from an ‘official’ report. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/General Letter from the Burma Synod, January 1894. He had lived in Burma continuously for thirty-four years.

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56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

Francis E. Skinner b. 1894; educated Beverley Grammar School and Wesley College Headingley; Burma 1916–30; married Miss Jessie Winston, daughter of Rev. W.R. Winston; d. 1983. SOAS/WMMS/Uncatalogued/MRP-4/3a: Skinner Papers. One Christian was an ex-Buddhist monk. The gong came from his monastery – ‘gong and man were converted’ at the same time. Forty-nine of seventy-three adult baptisms in the District and 86 of 138 members ‘on trial’ (preparing for full membership’) were lepers; Mandalay Burmese Church (the next largest) had 29 members on trial. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 1 March 1902. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/MMS/Box/1286/Burma District Report, 1903–4, ‘No adults in the two wards reserved for early cases were baptised or showed interest in Christian teaching.’ SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Mandalay Circuit Report, December 1909. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bradford–Hartley, 15 January 1913. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Mandalay Circuit Report, December 1911. Two wards (costing £200 each) and a women’s dispensary (costing £100) were given in 1910. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Synod, January 1925. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Chapman–Noble, 23 June 1938. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Hartley, 8 July 1918. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Synod Minutes, 4–6 January 1921. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Chapman–Rattenbury, 14 December 1941. Some missionaries suspected Dr Roy of being ‘excitable and partial’. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Shepherd–Rattenbury, 26 March 1945. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 4/Rattenbury–Burma Synod, 23 November 1945 and Minutes/Unclassified/MRP/Box 4/, 17 January 1946. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN 3/Shepherd–Rattenbury, 26 March 1945; Dr Jamaldin, a distinguished Methodist, reported to Holden. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod Minutes, 18 January 1947. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod Minutes, 17 January 1948. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod Minutes, 17 January 1949. SOAS/WMMS/Uncatalogued/MRP-6C/Firth Papers; Leper Home, Report for 1958. In 1959–60 Dr Edwards of the Moulmein Leper Hospital visited, and electric light was installed, but there were problems over the non-payment of fees by local bodies. The last circular letter from Ruth and Kenneth Kin Thein, October 1965, judiciously praised the Revolutionary Government. See Richell, Disease and Demography. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Phillips–Findlay, 31 December 1905. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 4 March 1906. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 21 December 1906. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 18 January 1907. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Mandalay Circuit Report, December 1909. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Hartley, 13 March 1909. Tilden Boyns Bisseker b. Birmingham 1877; worked in family business; organist and choirmaster, Birmingham Central Hall; Headingley College; Burma 1905–12; year in Switzerland because of poor health; d. 1966. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Pyawbwe Circuit Report, 31 December 1909. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Monywa Circuit Report, December 1910. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Kyaukse Circuit Report, December 1910. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Hartley, 16 September 1918. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Hartley, 30 December 1918. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Chapman–Goudie, 19 November 1921. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1-2/Synod Missionaries’ Meeting, 6–10 January 1913, ‘We have no medical work at present, but we earnestly desire to make a beginning.’ SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Sheldon–Noble, 27 March 1926. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Sheldon–Noble, 22 May 1926.

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95 96 97 98 99

Mrs Thomas died of TB in 1899, and Mrs Kitty Willans, first wife of Rev. H.C. Willans, died after her toe became septic in 1932. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bradford-Hartley (undated). Dr Percy Stocks b. Eccles 1889; Manchester Grammar School, King’s College Cambridge and Manchester University; junior doctor, Ogmore Vale Hospital, 1914; m. Augusta Griffiths, daughter of a Baptist minister, 26 November 1914; RAMC in France during the war; medical research, UCL; Chief Medical Statistician in General Register Office 1933–50; CMG, 1948; d. 1974. Andrew F. Walls, “The Heavy Artillery of the Missionary Army”: The Domestic Importance of the Nineteenth-Century Medical Missionary’, in The Church and Healing, ed. W.J. Sheils Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1982, pp. 287–298. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Stocks–Hartley, 28 February 1915. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Stocks–Sheldon, 16 October 1915. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Walters–Hartley–Sheldon, 10–16 August 1915. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP6d/2/Firth Papers: Burma Report, 1939. Stocks was better suited as statistician rather than physician. Richard Doll in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) notes that he had a distinguished career and was knighted in 1948. As a boy Percy Stocks preferred ‘to let others do the talking’ and became a ‘shy and reserved adult’.

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Religion

Politics and religion were two sides of the same coin. Wesleyan missionaries went to Upper Burma for many and complex reasons but their main purpose was to convert Burmans to Christianity. One scholar described it as a ‘corrupting’ task.1 Another suggested that giving ‘pagan souls the same cast as our own’ was to personalise imperialism.2 Few missions achieved the conversion targets set for them by their societies. As a result mission histories are often histories of failure.3 Conversion rates caused bitter arguments between Wesleyan Headquarters in London and missionaries in Upper Burma. Conversion meant one thing in England and another in the colonies. Evangelicals at home understood conversion to be that moment when a non-believer or ‘nominal’ Christian confronted his sins, entered a state of grace and was ‘born again’. In the mission field ‘conversion’ was more of a statistical exercise. New converts were totted up, factored into membership returns and submitted to the Missionary Committee where they were scrutinised in the way marketing directors might examine sales graphs. Year-on-year figures revealed growth or decline, while global comparisons measured relative evangelical efficiency. The statistics were an indication of the numbers changing allegiance from one religion to another, not whether individuals had changed their ‘conduct or inner lives’.4 Religious conversions caused bitter divisions within colonial communities. When converts entered new religions they opted out of old friendships. They inflicted pain on those left behind without allaying the suspicions of those they joined.5 Wesleyans in Burma, for example, often suspected new converts of seeking social or political preferment.6 The modernity of Christianity was an attraction during periods of colonial change.7 People at the margins of society were likelier to convert to Christianity because it gave them a new sense of value.8 Wesleyans in Upper Burma discovered that Indian street sweepers and lepers were [ 74 ]

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RELI G I O N

most easily proselytised. Conversion processes tended to exaggerate communal differences and they positioned missionaries on both sides of the colonialist–nationalist divide.9 Gandhi complained that Indian Christians were appendages of missionaries rather than spiritual communities in their own right, and Narayan Viman Tilak worried that converts viewed London as a New Jerusalem in the same way that Macaulay’s schools transformed Indians into brown Englishmen.10 Christian conversions caused particular offence in Upper Burma where Buddhism was the mainspring of culture and society. Converts were often branded as traitors and colonial fellow-travellers. There is no doubt that religious conversions were among ‘the most unsettling political events’ in the life of any colony.11 At first Winston and Bestall seemed too immersed in construction projects to worry about converting Burmans. This was not the case, for evangelism was never far from their minds. Their simple plan was to proselytise children in schools and to convert adults through streetpreaching. Despite newfangled magic lanterns and catchy Wesley hymns, the strategy never really worked. Buddhism was a hard nut to crack. Its sophisticated precepts were deeply embedded in Burmese life partly because Buddhism had indigenised itself by assimilating idiosyncratic forms of Nat-worship.12 Concepts of Burmese nationhood were bound up with Buddhism. Its omnipresent paraphernalia – pagodas, monasteries, chants, gongs, yellow robes, monks, shrines and alms-bowls – irritated and intimidated the early missionaries. When Winston and his colleagues realised that they would not convert significant numbers of Buddhists, they resorted to grumbling about Burmans generally. Winston described Buddhist Burmans as primitive, backward and crude. Thomas said they were idle, too fond of pleasure and lacking in initiative.13 Bestall accused them of being irresponsible, vain, fickle, shallow and ‘careless of disposition.’14 In 1904 despondent Wesleyan missionaries complained that the Burmese national character had been ‘formed by generations of loose morality.’15 These fig-leaves were designed to obscure the missionaries’ own failures. Later missionaries were more liberal, more willing to recognise the charm and sophistication of Burmans, but the bottom line remained the same. Salvation came only through Christ, and Christianity was the one true religion. Liberal or conservative, the missionaries had come to save souls. Generational differences between older and younger missionaries found echo in the differences between Burmese fathers and sons. An old man in the village of Myintha summed it up. ‘As for me,’ he said, ‘I never heard of this religion when I was young, and now I am covered [ 75 ]

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up in Buddhism, but these young people can go with Jesus Christ from the first.’16 Another elderly Burman explained, ‘we do not wish to learn and we do not understand.’17 The fact was that Buddhism had palliated defeat and was non-negotiable. Older Burmans were too weary to resist Christianity but were unwilling to abandon Buddhism. The early missionaries worked hard to change minds. They visited homes, produced children’s pamphlets, preached in villages, held lantern services, handed out Bible-portions and went on jungle tours.18 Despite such efforts, they had little to show for their labours and suspected that only Burmans could evangelise other Burmans. They insisted that ‘every convert from Buddhism must be a missionary’. The problem was that there were so few converts.19 Indeed, the Wesleyan Mission stagnated in the face of persistent Burmese indifference. The missionaries complained of ‘working hard for little reward’. They showed little sympathy for beleaguered Burmans who had to grapple with contrarian pressures. Pongyis whispered in one ear while missionaries sang hymns in the other. The whispers of the pongyis were harder to resist, and most Burmans simply wanted a quiet life.20 The situation improved slowly after 1908 as the pain of national defeat subsided.21 Nationalist opposition had not yet surfaced and Burmans seemed ready to accept that resistance to colonial rule was futile. Many were attracted by the new opportunities on offer. ‘Modern’ education and the ability to speak English were now the keys to success. Ambitious Burmese parents queued to get their sons into the new Wesley High Schools which were earning reputations for firm discipline and good teaching.22 Parents realised that their children might be proselytised but considered it to be a price worth paying. They need not have worried, for evangelism in schools usually stiffened resistance rather than gained converts. Wesleyan attitudes softened as the Burmans became more compliant. Many of the younger missionaries were captivated by their ‘confiding, simple nature’.23 The Burmese are a ‘bright and happy race,’ Bisseker enthused in 1907, and ‘I have a real love for them’.24 Sherratt knew of no attempts ‘to disparage Christianity’.25 Belief grew among the missionaries that they would ‘lay hold of the population’.26 In 1912 Bradford spoke for the others when he predicted that ‘we are going to do well in Burma this century’.27 The optimism was short-lived. Every year was the same. One person was converted here and another there. Even carefully stage-managed events like the huge centenary meeting in Mandalay in October 1913 elicited little response.28 J.H. Furnivall’s ‘idle dream’ that one day Burma might become a Christian land was highly fanciful.29 Wesleyans [ 76 ]

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discovered that they had too few converts to satisfy their Committee at home but too many to placate Buddhist leaders in Burma. Viswanathan rightly points out that religious conversion was destabilising whether it affected one person or an entire community.30 It will be recalled that a storm had broken out in December 1919 when Goudie, the Missionary Secretary in London, launched a furious attack on the Chairman of the District, Rev. Arthur Sheldon. He complained that membership figures had been almost static and that despite the unstinting generosity of Methodists at home there were 449 full members in 1907/8 and 533 in 1918. This was an increase of only 84. Goudie delivered the coup de grâce. He ended Sheldon’s Chairmanship because the District had stagnated.31 Sheldon was stunned and Synod rallied around him, accusing the Committee of condemning Sheldon without giving him a fair hearing. They demanded that Sheldon be allowed to continue. Goudie was unyielding. He retorted that the missionaries were too close for ‘detached, unbiased judgement’.32 Sheldon wrote back admitting that ‘the work in Burma appears to be slow’. However, he explained how hurt he was that his ‘leadership and direction’ were being questioned.33 The confrontation brought to a rancid close the first phase of the Wesleyan Mission’s work in Upper Burma. The more Sheldon reflected on recent events, the more convinced he became that seismic changes were shaking the country.34 ‘Burma is moving rapidly’ and ‘political consciousness is growing’, he wrote. ‘The awakening will perhaps come to a head with great suddenness’ for ‘there is a wind moving over the surface of events’.35 Sheldon had begun to think the unthinkable. Burma might never become a Christian country. In fact he wondered why any Burman should want to become a Christian when ‘here on the Plains a convert has nothing to gain and everything to lose. The Burman’s very daily existence, his customs, his rejoicings and his sorrows, seem bound up with Buddhism. Take the Buddhist festivals out of the ordinary life of the Burmese town or village’, he said, ‘and there is very little left for the Burman.’36 It was not what Goudie wanted to hear, and Sheldon had paid the price for his honesty. Geoffrey Oddie suggested that ‘sociological factors’ were more important in the process of conversion than ‘cosmological considerations’. Sheldon knew how difficult it was to wrest converts from a universalising religion like Buddhism. He had also found that it was easier to gain converts from the margins of society. In India conversion was often a ‘response to inequalities within the caste system’.37 But in Buddhist Burma there were no religious castes and few social outcastes.38 Table 2 compares Wesleyan Church membership in several [ 77 ]

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Table 2

Comparative Methodist Church membership figures, 1920–39

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Country

Burma China Ceylon India Gold Coast GB and Ireland

1920: Total number of Methodist membersa

1920: Total populationb

1939: Total number of Methodist membersa

1939: Total populationb

541 6152 6757 14,561 35,382 492,425

13,212, 192c 472, 200, 000 5,250,000 249,699,000 2,021,800 46,748,400

1063 9159 9455 38,585 57,855 500,000 (approx.)

16,823,798c 517,568,000 6,095,000 350,445,000 3,700,300 50,690,000

Notes: Full Methodist members were approximately 1% of the population of Great Britain and Ireland, and approximately 1.6% of the population of the Gold Coast. There were normally three times more ‘adherents’ than numbers in the Methodist Church. Sources: a Minutes of Wesleyan Conference 1921, Minutes of Methodist Conference 1940; b Jan Lahmeyer, Populstat.Info; c Richell, Disease and Demography, p. 7, Burma censuses 1921, and 1931.

countries. It was irrelevant that membership in the Upper Burma Mission had doubled between 1920 and 1939 for the numbers were so small. In any case, few of the converts came from mainstream Burman Buddhist families. Wesleyanism never really got off the ground and many of the converts were either ethnic outsiders or social outcastes such as Hindu street cleaners or lepers.39 Methodist communities in Burma, China, India and Ceylon were infinitesimally small in proportion to the populations as a whole. In Upper Burma in 1920 it was uncertain whether the Wesleyan Church would survive at all and it made little difference whether Sheldon stayed or went. The early missionaries ascribed the Burman’s ‘indifference’ to his ‘laziness’. They were wrong of course. ‘Indifference’ was the gentlest way in which the Burman could express resistance. Since the turn of the century deep currents had been at work in Upper Burma. Buddhist propaganda had become more aggressive and behind the scenes radical pongyis were pressurising Burmese communities to resist Christian missionaries. Upper Burma, always the ‘heart of the purest Buddhism’, was rapidly becoming its political centre too.40 ‘A spirit of contempt and intolerance’ was replacing indifference. Pakokku was a case in point. ‘The propaganda of a Buddhist preacher’ had caused a lot of trouble in the Wesley Anglo-Vernacular School and [ 78 ]

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pupils were becoming restive. Many of the parents were leaders of the Buddhist community and had previously been supportive of the school. Now they were expressing pro-Buddhist and anti-Christian opinions. Attitudes were also hardening in surrounding villages. Shaukka, for example, had gained the nickname ‘Choukke’ (stone), because of its anti-Christian sentiments. Buddhist schools had begun to compete aggressively with mission schools. At the same time opposition was growing elsewhere in Upper Burma. Local expressions of dissent, previously disregarded as isolated ‘spats’, had become connected episodes in a national movement.41 A general politicisation of Buddhism was underway. When Sheldon was heckled by groups of Buddhist youths in 1919 he had blamed the Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA) for hindering ‘the spread of the Gospel’.42 The colonial police had been watching YMBA activists since the movement was founded in 1906, but it seemed to be innocent enough, no more than the Buddhist version of the YMCA. Its founders were middle-class, Western-educated Burmans who were interested in ‘religious, social and cultural’ issues.43 U Kin and U May Oung and other YMBA leaders still wanted to restrict the Association’s activities to religion and culture, but they were fighting a losing battle. In January 1919 a group of young firebrands, enthused by ‘their own nationality’, broke away to form a dissident group. In 1916 a radical lawyer called U Thein Maung masterminded the YMBA campaign against the wearing of shoes in pagodas. The campaign had rumbled on for three years until October 1919 when a group of pongyis attacked some Europeans who were wearing shoes in the Eindawa Pagoda in Mandalay. The leader, U Kettaya, was sentenced to life imprisonment for attempted murder.44 Buddhism went onto the offensive with a vengeance in the 1920s. In January 1923 Synod listened with horror as Wesleyans living in villages near Pakokku described how they had been singled out by pongyis describing themselves as ‘nationalist missionaries’.45 They had attacked Christianity, accused non-Buddhists of being unpatriotic and warned Burmans not to follow Christian teachers.46 U Thawbita and U Tiloka might have been the architects of this campaign. Donald Smith described them as ‘irresponsible extremist pongyi politicians’ who had terrorised villagers with lurid anecdotes during 1923.47 Ordinary Burmans, for whom Buddhism had never been more than an ascriptive affiliation, suddenly climbed on the anti-Christian bandwagon.48 The missionaries were aghast as pongyis inflamed nationalist agitators with religious hatred. Hecklers and political agitators disrupted open-air services. In Pyawbwe Christians were abused by the local population and a ‘new national spirit’ became evident everywhere.49 [ 79 ]

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When Rev. W.J. Noble became Mission Secretary in 1923 he urged Wesleyans to inform themselves better about the ‘ancient and developed culture’ of Buddhism.50 Noble recommended that Modern Buddhism in Burma by Purser and Saunders should be studied in all ministerial training colleges in England. He described it as an ‘up-to-date, topical and uncompromising’ collection of essays that give an ‘accurate knowledge and a sympathetic understanding’ of Buddhist precepts. In fact Modern Buddhism contained few new insights and many old prejudices. Contributors described the Buddhist moral code as ‘lofty but ascetic and impossible’. They whistled in the dark, blaming badly behaved Englishmen and lazy Burmans for the failures to win converts, whilst asserting that the influence of pongyis had declined among educated middle-class Burmans. Some of them predicted that Western education would be the nemesis of Buddhism. Only one contributor, Rev. W.W. Cochrane, acknowledged that sayadaws (senior monks) were politicising young Buddhists, that rifts were opening between moderate older Buddhists and aggressive young radicals, and that Buddhist leaders were becoming aggressively anti-Christian.51 Wesleyan missionaries in Upper Burmese circuits had been aware of these aggressively anti-Christian activities since 1902 when Rev. T. Phillips noticed a peculiar phenomenon in Kyaukse. An ‘Irishman in the guise of a Buddhist priest’ had gone around saying ‘wild and foolish things about Christianity and its failure in England’. He was probably the mysterious U Dhammaloka, and his ranting presaged more general patterns of Buddhist opposition. Trouble erupted again in 1908, this time in Pakokku, where another ‘European Buddhist’ was said to have stirred up trouble.52 A ‘very famous Buddhist preacher’ caused further difficulties when he returned to his headquarters in Monywa. Buddhists in Monywa had previously been friendly, but now several of them opposed ‘the spread of Christianity’. It was rumoured that a Society for the Propagation of Buddhism was about to start up there.53 In 1910 several ‘Buddhist propaganda societies’ sprang up in Mandalay and yet more shadowy ‘European Buddhists’ were spotted distributing pamphlets containing vicious ‘caricatures of Christianity and European social life’.54 It is not clear who these mysterious ‘European Buddhists’ were, but Sarkisyanz mentions several Englishmen who converted to Buddhism at the turn of the century. One of them, Allan Bennet Macgregor, had changed his name to Ananda Maitreya in 1902, but it was thought that he had returned to England by 1908.55 Nor is it clear which ‘famous pongyis’ returned to their monasteries in Pakokku and Monywa. Ledi Sayadaw (Aggamahâ Pandita) was one candidate, although it was always supposed that his mission did not start there until 1913. [ 80 ]

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However, there is little doubt that these shadowy characters were so-called ‘political pongyis’ whom Cady maintained had ‘captured control of many of the GCBA sponsored village Athins’.56 According to Mendelson, the Athins were not formed until 1921–23.57 N.C. Sen confirms that the ‘intense political activity in which the Buddhist monks played a very important part’ took place between 1921 and 1922, and that ‘Phongyis [sic] had never previously taken part in any political or other public agitation’.58 Smith is equally emphatic that ‘the political pongyis’ did not emerge until the 1920s.59 U Maung Maung specifically states that the ‘venerable sayadaws’ mounted their ‘campaigns of political agitation against the government’ after the arrest of U Ottama in 1921.60 Silverstein, alone, places the activities of ‘political pongyis’ before 1920, although even he gives the relatively late date of 1917–18.61 The weight of evidence leads Bruce Matthews to conclude that the activities of ‘independent, radicalised monks’ began in the 1920s or 1930s.62 The odd thing is that the Wesleyan missionaries on the spot knew differently. Since 1902 they had been coming up against the unmistakable activities of political pongyis. This was a full twenty years before conventional scholarship said it was actually happening. Perhaps Monywa, Pakokku and Mandalay were test-beds for the agitation that would eventually sweep through Burma. In 1908 the missionaries might have stumbled upon the youthful Ottama, experimenting with his ‘curious brand of traditionalism mixed with Gandhian boycotting and non-cooperation’ which became his trademark in subsequent years.63 It still does not explain the identities of the mysterious European Buddhists who flitted around Upper Burmese towns in these early years. It is a phenomenon that is rarely, if ever, mentioned in the scholarly literature. It is unclear whether these activities were part of a coordinated campaign or whether they were spontaneous and localised activities directed against the British occupation.64 Estimates suggest that there were about 50,000 pongyis in Upper Burma at the turn of the century and it would have been very surprising if some of them at least did not try to impose radical views on lay Buddhists. Politico-religious protests in Pakokku, Monywa and Mandalay had become almost inevitable once the office of thathanabaing was abandoned, for it left the Sangha completely unregulated.65 In the towns and villages of Upper Burma the missionaries were witnessing a spectacular political sideshow. Perhaps it was a rehearsal for Buddhist ‘modernism’ which had not yet gone ‘national’ or ‘public’. For many years ideological preparations had been brewing behind closed doors in remote monasteries. In 1920, the Thuriya newspaper, [ 81 ]

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well known for its modernist sympathies, published U Ottama’s letter urging Governor Craddock to leave Burma. It was the starting-gun for a more public and truculent phase. ‘Modernist’ leaders had established the General Council of the Sangha Sammeggi (GCSS) to encourage ordinary Buddhists into political activism while ‘modernists’ like U Wisara and U Ottama combined ‘elite aspirations’ with ‘traditional folk Buddhism’. ‘Modernism’ was an attempt to drag Buddhist precepts into the twentieth century and to make them relevant to contemporary politics. ‘Modernist’ ideas like these made up the ‘Buddha’s Social Gospel’. The term was coined by Angarika Dharmapala, editor of Maha Bodhi, who also called upon Buddhist missionaries to go out into towns and villages to campaign against Christianity. Modernism revolutionised attitudes to suffering, poverty, nirvana and the like. Whereas traditional Buddhism represented ‘suffering’ as ‘cosmic suffering’, ‘modernists’ borrowed ideas from Marx, Nietzsche and European Christian Socialists to transform it into ‘social suffering’. Similarly the ‘modernist’ politician Thakin Kodaw Hmain assured Buddhists that if they fought for independence from British rule they could gain ‘nirvana within this world’. Yet another ‘modernist’ gave a new ‘twist’ to the ancient Buddhist practice of almsgiving. Traditionally it had implied an acceptance of poverty, but in 1923 U Thilasara urged Buddhists to ‘provide for their own well-being’ before engaging in almsgiving and altruistic economic activity.66 During the 1920s the transformation was evident in the bazaars and backstreets of Upper Burmese towns. Spiritual confrontations between Christians and Buddhists became intensely political. Walters noted that the spirit of ‘benevolent intolerance’ so characteristic of the old Buddhism had developed into ‘reasoned opposition’. He attributed the new phenomenon to ‘nationalism’.67 In 1922 schools became religious battlegrounds as monks in Mandalay refused shinpyu (initiation ceremony) to any boy attending a Christian school.68 In the same year a Buddhist Middle School in Monywa launched a ferocious campaign against the Wesleyan Mission School. In Pyawbwe, a Buddhistorganised strike undermined morale in the Wesleyan Anglo-Vernacular School. The missionaries looked on helplessly while religious hostilities were inflamed by nationalists. The Circuit reports for 1922 spoke of ‘aggressive Buddhist tactics’ and ‘anti-Christian propaganda’. Buddhist ‘counter-influences’ were reported in villages around Mandalay and ‘quietly conducted opposition’ was noted in Monywa. In Kyaukse, the merest ‘mention of Christianity put an end to all further conversation’.69 The 1923 Synod [ 82 ]

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Letter spoke of a turbulent ‘anti-missionary storm’ and of the sheer brazenness of the Buddhist resurgence. Synod itself heard how villagers near Pakokku were targeted by a monastery from which ‘speakers are sent out to all parts of the district as nationalist missionaries’.70 In 1924 the WMMS Secretary described how ‘Buddhist opposition, long latent and quiescent, is becoming every year more vigorous and articulate.’71 The mantle of political agitation may have passed from cultivators to secular students and industrial workers during the 1920s and 1930s, but the missionaries considered political pongyis to be the éminences grises behind the scenes. They were common denominators who rarely took centre stage but flitted menacingly in and out of the limelight. Two hitherto unreported incidents showed how easily pongyis could spread panic through Methodist ranks. During the ‘Burma, Burman and Buddhism’ campaign of 1936, pongyis challenged the Methodist Mission to a public debate. A terrified Rev. U Po Tun was shoved forward to present the Wesleyan case and a little later he attended a ‘Five Unity Party’ rally in Mandalay. Speaker after speaker warned the crowd that Christians were plotting to absorb them. One speaker accused Christian missionaries of bribing converts with ‘clothes, food, and presents’. The audience was urged to support their ‘own people’ and their ‘own religion’. Burmese Christians were branded as ‘slaves of the British’ and ‘shameless traitors to their own nation’. Another speaker threatened to wash the audience’s ‘feet in Christian blood’. U Po Tun was horrified by lurid descriptions of mobs attacking Methodists in Pegu and of a Christian being murdered simply because ‘he was a Christian’. Other speakers sneered at Christian nations for ‘persecuting one another’. Buddhists seemed to be on the march everywhere as they opened schools, orphanages and charitable hospitals. Christian mission schools were denounced and pongyis distributed pamphlets that encouraged Burmans to attack Christians. U Po Tun was very badly shaken indeed.72 It was during critical times such as these when Buddhist indifference or opposition became unbearable, that the missionaries dreamed of moving to other parts of Burma like Rangoon, the Shan States or the Chin Hills. The frequency with which the dream occurred became a barometer of missionary morale. Winston had first envisaged moving to Rangoon in 1895–96. The city’s population of 180,000 was expected to double as new railway lines fanned out towards western China.73 Christopher Bayly describes Rangoon at the time as ‘a city of commerce and leisure, a Calcutta without babus, a Singapore or Shanghai without tongs’.74 From Winston’s perspective the most important thing was that Rangoon was cosmopolitan. Its population contained many [ 83 ]

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non-Buddhists, including Chinese, Eurasians, Europeans and of course thousands of Indians who were ‘Indian first and Burman last’.75 Wesleyan converts from Upper Burma disappeared into the crowd and were lost to the Church when they went off to work or study in Rangoon.76 Other Christian denominations had mission stations but there was no-one to keep an eye on the Wesleyans. Winston was keen to set up a Wesleyan mission. He hoped the American Methodists had forgotten the promise he had once made to Bishop Ninde. Bestall set the ball rolling in 1899. He told the Missionary Committee that Rangoon was the capital, seat of government, centre of communal life, and rival to Bombay and Calcutta.77 Rangoon’s population had risen to 232,000 and the university was about to open. Old boys from Pakokku High School who worked in the city had asked Bestall if their ‘old mission’ could come to Rangoon. Wesleyan soldiers, sailors, various businessmen and Indian Christians from Madras made similar requests. When Bestall preached at the ‘Scots’ Kirk in Rangoon in 1905 the Presbyterian congregation told him that a Wesleyan mission would be welcome.78 Excitement mounted in 1906 when it seemed that the Missionary Committee was about to appoint a Wesleyan chaplain to Rangoon.79 Sherratt scurried around to find a suitable site for a mission in the centre of the city, but land was going fast and prices were rising.80 The Missionary Committee procrastinated and eventually appointed a sub-committee. After many months of deliberation it recommended that the Wesleyans and American Methodists should build either a joint University Hostel or a United Christian College. It was too late. Enthusiasm had waned and nothing further happened.81 The missionaries had to put on hold their plans to escape from the Buddhist plains but the matter resurfaced a decade later. This time Bradford looked towards the Chin Hills. The population was sparse but the Chins were animists and more biddable.82 Vickery preferred the Shan Hills and he argued for an expansion of the Mission Station in Pyawbwe which was a terminus for Shan caravan routes.83 Bestall, man about town that he was, determined that the Mission should stay in ‘the great centres of the population’.84 Bradford came up with an interesting compromise solution. He was a lateral thinker, and proposed that the Mission should acquire a motorboat capable of sailing up the muddy creeks of the Chindwin River above Monywa. They were unnavigable by Irrawaddy Flotilla Company boats so no missionaries had visited the isolated riverside Chin villages. For the first time it would be possible to evangelise there. Although not an entirely original idea, it required someone of Bradford’s flair [ 84 ]

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and imagination to drive it forward.85 He wrote an inspiring article in the Methodist Recorder in 1912 and, as a result, Mr Booth, a prominent Wesleyan in Dublin, offered to pay for the boat.86 Bradford was a master of grand designs but not of detailed plans. He gave Mr Booth the wrong specifications, and before the mistake was realised the vessel was half completed in a Devon boatyard.87 The long-suffering Mr Booth agreed to abandon it and to pay the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company to build a replacement boat at half the cost. The vessel was completed in December 1913 and was named The Hilda.88 By happy coincidence the young Rev. J.M. Young had just arrived in Burma, complete with his Masters Certificate.89 Under his command The Hilda chugged up and down the Chindwin on voyages of evangelism. The project ground to a halt in 1915 when Young joined the army. The Hilda was ‘mothballed’ and then sold off at a ‘thumping’ loss in January 1918. It brought to an end an exciting but expensive project.90 In the mid-1930s when the missionaries feared that Buddhism and the ‘future policy of this land’ had fallen under ‘the malign influence’ of the GCBA, they gazed longingly once again towards the Chin Hills, but the war put paid to any future plans.91 Decades later the boat project was resurrected with similar results. However, a circuit was established in Rangoon, and work in the Chin Hills took off spectacularly. By 1940 it looked as if the Methodist Mission might dwindle away and die. There were only 1,063 members. Most of them were non-Burmans, and few felt any deep loyalty to the Church. In 1936 half the memberson-trial in Pakokku had to be struck off the list for living as Buddhists. Rev. Pai Bwin faced a ‘rising tide of nationalism’ in Pyawbwe, and in Kyaukse younger members were expelled from the Church after taking part in Buddhist ceremonies. Methodists could not find work and were cold-shouldered by Buddhist neighbours.92 Church members felt that they were being spied upon by missionaries on the look out for evidence of sexual peccadilloes. It was much easier to be Buddhist in Upper Burma than Christian. Indeed, Buddhists seemed able to challenge the Wesleyans at will and Chapman even suspected monasteries of manufacturing spears and swords.93 Leading Buddhists had joined up with secular nationalists and the Synod Letter of January 1939 described how ‘the Buddhist priesthood’ was orchestrating unrest and recapturing the ‘political influence’ it had once enjoyed under the Burmese kings. The Burmese political leadership had fallen ‘under the direction of sayadaws’ and in Mandalay pongyis were persuading Burmans to boycott Indian shops. In a village near Monywa pongyis incited Burmans to throw stones at Wesleyan preachers. Children in the Shan Hills refused to go to the [ 85 ]

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Wesleyan Lonpo School and the Christian headmaster of a Baptist School in Mandalay had left to become a pongyi.94 Buddhist activists had already seized control of many urban cultural organisations and were transforming them into politico-religious pressure groups. At the same time networks of kyaungtaiks (complexes of Buddhist monasteries) and rural wunthanu athins coordinated populist campaigns against land taxes, Christian education and Indian shopkeepers. Buddhist leaders succeeded in tarring European government officers and missionaries with the same brush and pongyis did what they liked in villages. They enjoyed more social prestige and more popular support than ever before.95 Methodist missionaries were slow to recognise the potency of the threat posed by Buddhist ‘modernism’. They tried to counter it with an ill-judged and counterproductive campaign of ‘aggressive evangelism’ in the late 1920s. It succeeded in alienating ordinary Buddhists and in exposing the intellectual shortcomings of some missionaries.96 Only the Upper Chindwin circuit managed to buck the trend when the Methodists there received an unexpected bonus. The Baptist Mission ‘handed over’ the entire Christian Chin village of Nahannwe. Moreover, fifty adults and sixty children were baptised in 1939 and 760 enthusiasts attended a vast Lushai Christian Convention in Tahan in 1941. Events of that size were unimaginable on the Buddhist plains.97 Elsewhere in Upper Burma there was little to show for a lot of effort: three men trained for the ministry, the dispensary at Lonpo in the Shan Hills treated 3,000 people in 1940 and five Christian officials worked for the Kyaukse District council.98 In Mandalay five adults, two juniors, two infants and eight lepers were baptised, and in Pakokku there were four new members, including the stoical U Tin whose wife was dead, whose house was burgled and whose crops were destroyed two years running.99 In Buddhist Upper Burma new converts could be counted on the fingers of two hands. The situation had become desperate in villages where once the missionaries had felt safest. Rev. Pai Bwin used to speak of the courtesy and respect shown to him by village headmen, but it was no longer the case.100 In most villages Christians had reverted to Buddhism. During the whole of 1939 only one fifteen-year-old boy had been baptised in rural Upper Buma. He lived in the very remote village of Thitkaukseit.101 In the village of Ynlaygon near Pyawbwe the ‘Buddhist wife of a Christian’ had publicly denounced her husband and turned the whole village against him.102 Buddhists broke up Methodist services in the village of Pale near Monywa.103 The thugyi in Manbein was ‘excessively polite’ to the missionaries, but behind their backs he incited violent opposition. Monks from a neighbouring monastery warned the [ 86 ]

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Yedwet headman not to fraternise with missionaries. In the village of Wathondaya, a friendly thugyi died in August 1939 and was replaced by a hostile successor. For decades the missionaries had been visiting Ywadan near Pyawbwe before finally acknowledging that there was not a single Christian in the village. Buddhist neighbours ransacked a Christian convert’s house near Kalaw; and in the supposedly Christian stronghold of Yesagyo near Pakokku no-one was willing to teach the Bible.104 Bright spots were few and far between. Missionaries were fêted in Yegyi when they nursed back to health an elder who had been bitten by a rabid dog. Ordinary villagers were more diffident and considerate than townsfolk. They rarely asked why Christian nations had fought against each other in the war. It was a favourite question in Mandalay. Village people were also more resistant to anti-Christian gossip than in the towns. Otherwise, the picture was uniformly bleak.105 While the rest of the world was ablaze between 1939 and 1941, Upper Burma was eerily peaceful. There were some minor squabbles with Buddhists, some misbehaviour in the Leper Home and twenty church members departed for India. It was par for the course.106 As war drew closer there was a profound sense of foreboding. The deaths of several old stalwarts symbolised the glum mood. Walter D’Silva (the Sinhalese catechist), Maung Maung Galay, Maung Soe, Saya U Myint, Maung Chein (‘everybody’s friend’), Saya Po Maung and U Po Min, an inmate in the Leper Home ‘for the past fifty years’, all died in 1941.107 In December 1941 people crammed anxiously into Wesley Church Mandalay for the carol service. A tearful Christmas concert was held in the Girls High School. War swept towards Upper Burma and it signalled the end of an era.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6

D.W. Bebbington, ‘Atonement, Sin and Empire, 1880–1914’, in The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions ed. Porter, p. 23. Nicholas Thomas, ‘Colonial Conversions: Difference, Hierarchy, and History in Early Twentieth-Century Evangelical Propaganda’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 34:2 (1992), 389. See C.M. Clark, The Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia, 1728–1941, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 7, and D.J. Fleming, ‘Degrees of Aggressiveness in Religion’, Journal of Religion, 8:1 (1928), 1. P. Hardy, The Muslims of British India, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1972, p. 8. C. Lamb and M.D. Bryant (eds), Religious Conversion: Contemporary Practices and Controversies, London, Cassell, 1999, p. 12. G.A. Oddie, Religious Conversion Movements in South Asia: Continuities and Change, 1800–1900, Oxford, Curzon, 1997, and S.C.H. Kim, In Search of Identity: Debates on Religious Conversion in India, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 3.

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M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London, Routledge, 1992, and L.R. Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1993, p. 2. Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion, pp. 2–15. R. Robinson and S. Clarke, Religious Conversion in India: Modes, Motivations and Meanings, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 13, and ‘Introduction’, in Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of Christianity, ed. Peter Van der Veer, London, Routledge, 1996, p. 7. Kim, In Search of Identity, p. 35 G. Viswanathan, Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity and Belief, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1998, pp. 1–5 and 87. Macaulay’s students were ‘Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect’. Nat-worship is a distinctively Burmese form of spirit-worship. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Thomas–Walton, 1 July 1890. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Burma District Reports for 1896, 1897 and 1898, and Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 30 June 1906. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Burma District Synod, 29 December 1904. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/General Letter from Burma Synod, January 1896. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Olver, 27 August 1894. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Annual District Meeting, 17 February 1890. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Burma District Report for 1893, 12 January 1894; Synod Minutes, 6 January 1903. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Burma District Report, December 1890, General Letter from Burma Synod, January 1896, Burma District Report for 1896 and January 1897, SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/ FBN1/Mandalay Circuit Report, December 1909, and SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/General Letter from Synod, 7 January 1902. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Burma District Synod, 6 January 1903, and Mandalay Circuit Report, 31 December 1912. See Chapter 6. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Monywa Circuit Report, 31 December 1910. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bisseker–Findlay, 26 January 1907. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Sherratt–Olver, 5 September 1897. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/General Letter from Burma Synod, January 1896. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bradford–Goudie, 31 October 1912. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Phillips–Goudie, 30 January 1914. J.S. Furnivall, Christianity and Buddhism in Burma: An Address to the Rangoon Diocesan Council, Rangoon, People’s Literature Committee, 1929. See Viswanathan, preface to Outside the Fold. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Goudie–Sheldon, 11 December 1919; and Minutes/FBN1-2/Goudie–Burma Synod, 4 December 1919; £204,830 was collected for overseas missions. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Goudie–Burma District Synod, 5 February 1920. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Goudie, 26 January 1920. Sheldon ceased to be Chairman of the District, but later returned to Burma as a missionary. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Goudie, 29 August 1920. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Goudie, 15 November 1919. Oddie, Religious Conversion Movements, pp. 8–9. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Goudie, 15 November 1919. Chuni Lal, an Indian chauffeur, brought many Hindu street cleaners to the church in Mandalay; patients in the Leper Home were the largest single group of church members. Charney, Powerful Learning, pp. 265–269. See SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Pakokku Circuit Report, 31 December 1910 and Monywa Circuit Report, 31 December 1912; FBN1-2/Pakokku, Mandalay and Monywa, Circuit Reports, 31 December 1913; and Pakokku Circuit Report, 31

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December 1914. ‘Buddhism is not as strong in jungle places as in Salin itself,’ the Monywa Circuit Report said, and ‘in the villages some adults and children question Buddhist customs and practices’; the Kyaukse Circuit Report for 1910 said ‘Villages have not yet been influenced by the revival of Buddhism.’ SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Goudie, 29 August and 15 November 1919, and SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1-2/Burma District Synod: Pastoral Committee, 9–13 January 1919. Smith, Religion and Politics in Burma, p. 87. See N.C. Sen, A Peep into Burma Politics 1917–1942, Kitabistan, Allahabad, Law Journal Press, 1945, p. 7; Smith, Religion and Politics in Burma, p. 88; and SOAS/ WMMS/Minutes/FBN1-2/Burma District Synod: General Letter, 17 January 1919. The split resulted in the formation of the radical General Council of Burmese Associations. The disrespectful European habit of wearing shoes in pagodas was an ideal nationalist cause: fifty YMBA branches supported the campaign. U Thein Maung was a lawyer from Prome. The All Burma Conference of Buddhists met in 1916 despite a government ban and it continued to agitate. It was strange that the Wesleyans did not mention the disturbances in October 1924 outside Shanzu Station, Mandalay near Wesley Church. Maung Maung, From Sangha to Laity, p. 25. Synod reported that 300 monks were staying in a monastery – probably Mahawithutayama kyaungtaik; U Maung Maung confirms that 200 young pongyis were tutored there. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod: General Letter, January 1923. Smith, Religion and Politics in Burma, pp. 99–100. Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1985, p. 50. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District: Annual Report, December 1922. W.J. Noble, DD b.1879; Missionary in Ceylon 1900–22; WMMS Secretary 1923–38; d. 1962. See SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Sherratt–Olver, 5 September 1897, ‘In Buddhism there is practically no God and no Saviour. Here lies our strength and their weakness’; and SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Letter to the Burma District Synod, 13 December 1923. Rev. W.C.B. Purser [Vicar St Michael’s Kemmendine] and K.J. Saunders [Warden, YMCA Hostel, Rangoon] (eds), Modern Buddhism in Burma, Rangoon, Christian Literature Society, 1914. It was Rev. G. Whitehead (SPG) from Prome who blamed ‘The un-Christian and even anti-Christian lives of people from nominally Christian lands’. Rev. W.H.S. Hascall (ABM, Rangoon), spoke of the ‘natural apathy of the people’. On p. 90, Bishop Fyffe (Bishop of Rangoon), speaking at the Edinburgh Conference 1910, recounted how a parent had written in the Burma Critic, 14 September 1913: ‘if we wanted our children to be hpongyis we would send them to the monastery, but we want them to be men of the world and send them to your schools’; Professor Roberts: ‘Western schools have destroyed a vast amount of picturesque misinformation’, but changes would come through ‘the educational system, the rise of intelligence and new thoughts’ (p. 91). Some Wesleyans agreed with the comments of Rev. W.W. Cochrane (ABM, Shan States) (see SOAS/WMMS/ Minutes/FBN1/Burma District Synod, 6 January 1903). See SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Phillips–Findlay, 28 December 1902; Pakokku Circuit Report, 31 December 1908, and Burma District Synod, 6 January 1909; E. Sarkisyanz , Buddhist Backgrounds of the Burmese Revolution, The Hague Martinus Nijnoff 1965: Sarkisyanz cites an unnamed Irishman who came to Burma in 1900 who might have fitted the sighting in Kyaukse in 1902. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Monywa Circuit Report, 31 December 1908. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Mandalay Circuit Report, 31 December 1910. Sarkisyanz, Buddhist Backgrounds, pp. 115–116. Gordon Douglas, son of an Earl, became Bhikku Ashoka and died in 1900 in Bassein. John F. Cady, History of Modern Burma, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1958, p. 231. Mendelson, Sangha and State in Burma, p. 199.

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66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

79 80 81 82 83 84 85

Sen, Peep into Burma Politics, pp. 14–15. Smith, Religion and Politics in Burma, p. 95. Maung Maung, From Sangha to Laity, p. 25. Josef Silverstein, Burma: Military Rule and the Politics of Stagnation, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1977. Bruce Matthews, ‘The Legacy of Tradition and Authority: Buddhism and the Nation in Myanmar’, in Buddhism and Politics in Twentieth Century Asia, ed. Ian Harris, London, Continuum, 1999, p. 29. Mendelson, Sangha and State in Burma, p. 222. Melford E. Spiro, Buddhism and Society: A Great Tradition and its Burmese Vicissitudes, London, Allen & Unwin, 1971, p. 383. Mendelson, Sangha and State in Burma, pp. 184–193. The thathanabaing’s powers had been declining since 1893. Then the U Teza v. U Pyinnya judgement, 1903, took powers from him and gave them to the civil courts. The Rangoon Court decision in 1935 finally ended the primate’s jurisdiction. See E. Sarkisyanz, ‘Buddhist Backgrounds of Burmese Socialism’, in Religion and Legitimation of Power in Thailand, Laos and Burma, ed. Bardwell Smith, Chambersburg, PA, Anima Books, 1978, pp. 91–92. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Walters–Noble, 12 June 1924. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Mandalay Circuit Report, December 1922. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Mandalay, Monywa and Kyaukse Circuit Reports, December 1922. Maung Maung, From Sangha to Laity, p. 25. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Russell–Walters, 4 December 1924. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Mandalay Circuit Report, 31 December 1936. The ‘Five Unity Party’ was formed after the ‘Burma, Burman and Buddhism’ campaign. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/General Letter from Synod, 17 January 1896. Rangoon overtook Mandalay as Burma’s first city in 1881. C. Bayly, Rangoon (Yangon) 1939–49: The Death of a Colonial Metropolis, Cambridge Centre for South Asian Studies, Occasional Paper No. 3, 2003. N.R. Chakravarti, The Indian Minority in Burma: The Rise and Decline of an Immigrant Community, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971, p. xxii. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Olver, 3 April 1895; Bestall– Olver, 28 July 1899. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Burma District Synod, January 1898. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Burma District Synod, January 1905, and Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 24 May 1901 (Findlay, the new Missionary Committee Secretary, was about to visit Burma), and Bestall–Findlay 16 November 1905. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Burma District Synod, Missionaries Committee, 4 Jan 1906. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1Bestall–Findlay, 18 March 1906, and Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 19 August 1906. The site was on the market for Rs 100,000 for only four days. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1-2/Sherratt, Vickery and Sheldon, ‘Report on the Occupation of Rangoon’, 1918. See Charles S. Brant and Mi Mi Khaing, ‘Missionaries among the Hill Tribes of Burma’, Asian Survey, 1:1 (1961), 44–51. Vickery suggested it when Bestall visited Kyaukse in December 1906. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 3 November 1906. Bradford’s projects included sponsoring village schools by English benefactors. £10 sponsorship paid for a school building (but not teachers and equipment). Miss Bawden, Headmistress of Sunninghill, sent £10, and demanded photographs of ‘her’ school, but Bradford’s camera had been eaten by white ants. Bradford had to find the extra money for a teacher etc. Bradford also planned a school to train Chin boys to be blacksmiths and carpenters, but Chin parents would not allow their sons to go to Pakokku.

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90 91 92 93 94

95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

107

The boat was built to Bradford’s original specifications in Kingsdown, Devon. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Bradford–Hartley, 20 March 1912. Bradford discovered it was too heavy and too narrow, the propeller was too big and it should have been flat-bottomed. The Irrawaddy Flotilla Company built it in two months for Rs 1,400 (£120). SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Bradford–Hartley, 30 October, 1 November, 20 December 1912, 7 January 1913 and 2 March 1914. John Melvyn Young b. Ferndale 8 February 1888; son of Rev. David Young; educated Macclesfield Grammar School and Kingswood School; railway engineer; Richmond College; Burma 1913–33; married 1918; Chairman of the District 1929–33; d. 7 November 1976. The Methodist District launched another Chindwin motor boat in September 1960. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod: General Letter, 13 January 1937. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN2/Pakokku Circuit Report, December 1936. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN3/Mandalay Mission Circuit Report, 31 December 1936, and Correspondence/FBN3/Chapman–Noble, 15 August 1938. See SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Chapman–Noble, 28 August 1938; Burma District Synod: General Letter, 11 January 1939; Uncatalogued/MRP/6/Firth Papers: Burma District Report, 1939; and Correspondence/FBN3/Shepherd–Noble, 6 June 1939. Smith, Religion and Politics in Burma, p. 93. The catchphrase ‘aggressive evangelism’ was frequently used by Goudie and his colleagues. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6A/Firth Papers: Burma District Reports, 1940 and 1941. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Kyaukse Circuit Report, 1940. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Mandalay Circuit Report, 1939. The high school students were Maung Shwin, Ma Mya May and Ma Khin Myint. SOAS/MMSMinutes/FBN4/Pyawbwe and Monywa Circuit Reports, 1940. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Pakokku Circuit Report, 1939. SOAS/WMMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6/Firth Papers: Burma District Report, 1940. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod: Report and Circuit Reports for Mandalay, Pyawbwe, Kyaukse, Monywa and Pakokku, December 1936. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Pakokku Circuit Report, 1940. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Pyawbwe Circuit and Monywa Circuit Reports, 1939, and Uncatalogued/MRP/6A/Firth Papers: Mandalay Circuit Report, 1940. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Mandalay Circuit Report, 1939, and SOAS/MMS/ Uncatalogued/MRP/6A/Firth Papers: Burma District Report, 1941. Two girls postponed their baptisms ‘in deference to their Buddhist families’. Parents considered ‘desertion from Buddha’ to be synonymous with ‘disloyalty to the country’. Children who abandoned ‘the traditions of the nation’ brought shame on their families. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6A/Firth Papers: Burma District Report, 1940, and Minutes/FBN4/Pakokku Circuit Report, 1941.

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Schools

The Wesley high schools were extraordinarily successful during the early years of the twentieth century (figure 6). They were centres of learning, producers of public servants and much sought after by Burmese parents.1 The early missionaries intended their schools to be nurseries for church leaders and proselytisers of new members. In the event the Mandalay Leper Home probably produced more converts than all the schools put together. The schools lost their lustre in the 1920s, caused many headaches during the 1930s and disappeared almost without trace after 1945. By 1889 43,960 students had enrolled in 2,940 public schools in Burma. Education was on the brink of transforming society.2 Winston had dreamed of a day when networks of Wesleyan primary schools would feed mission ‘high schools and training institutions’.3 Political antagonism and lack of resources ultimately prevented the fulfilment of his ambition. Despite this, within two years Winston had established five schools with a total of 139 pupils.4 Three of the schools were in Mandalay. The Boys English School was the largest, with eighty-five pupils. Next came the Boys Training School, but it was the pioneering Girls Boarding School established in 1888 that really caught the eye. Although it had enrolled only twentyone pupils by 1893, twenty-one was a significant number in a country where female education was virtually unknown. Moreover several of the girls showed an active interest in Christianity.5 By 1894 AngloVernacular Schools for boys had been opened in Kyaukse, Pakokku and Monywa. In Pakokku there were also four vernacular schools, including one girls’ school. The future looked very promising.6 Kyaukse and Pyawbwe provided interesting case studies. An AngloVernacular Wesley Boys School had been established in Kyaukse in 1888. It became so popular that it outgrew its original bamboo-matting structure, and in 1903 it moved into a new two-storey brick building [ 92 ]

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6 Early Wesleyan school buildings. Schools attracted government grants and were often built on an imposing scale. They were used for worship.

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accommodating 150 pupils.7 Phillips supervised the school from thirty miles away in Mandalay. It was not ideal, but his task was made more difficult in 1904 when a Buddhist AV School opened its doors. At the same time he was responsible for the Wesleyan Anglo-Vernacular School even further away in Pyawbwe. He had set it up in order to preempt the opening of a Buddhist school in the town. His plan worked when, after a good deal of politicking, the Buddhist leaders threw in their lot with the Wesleyan Boys School. The odds were stacked against Buddhist education at the turn of the century.8 The Colonial Government was investing heavily in education. It encouraged mission schools generally and it was particularly impressed by the Wesley high schools. They were regarded as bastions of social order. British businessmen and ambitious Burmese-Buddhist parents also liked them. Colonial officials expected them to produce loyal subjects on the cheap, employers relied on them to turn out numerate and literate workers, and Burmese parents believed they would get their sons through examinations.9 The Wesleyan schools quickly became academic powerhouses, renowned for progressive teaching, firm discipline and high moral values. Thugyis often tried to tempt missionaries to open schools in their townships.10 In 1911, for example, Buddhist elders requested Rev. Edgar Bradford to start a Wesleyan Anglo-Vernacular School in Salin, a prosperous town south of Pakokku. Bradford obliged and a school was opened in 1912. It became an instant success.11 Appropriately, the largest and most prestigious of the high schools were in Mandalay, but the distribution of the Wesleyan schools revealed new demographic trends. Trade was booming along the Irrawaddy and Chindwin rivers and people were flocking to the expanding commercial towns of Pakokku and Monywa. The statistics did not lie. By 1917 there were four Wesleyan schools (with 464 pupils) in Mandalay, but ten schools (with 799 pupils) in Pakokku where the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company was based. IFC needed large numbers of English-speaking recruits to work in its boats, offices and shipyards.12 Wesleyan education in Upper Burma reached its zenith in 1917 when 2,216 pupils had registered in thirty schools. In December 1940 Rev. Vincent Shepherd hosted a luncheon party in Rangoon for distinguished old boys of Wesley high schools from these halcyon years. One was a member of the House of Representatives, and another, U Ba Yin (a former Pyawbwe Wesley High School pupil), had just become Minister for Education. Although he was a Buddhist, U Ba Yin spoke glowingly about Wesleyan mission schools.13 Not surprisingly he was lionised in Methodist circles, and in 1941 was guest-of-honour at the Mandalay Wesley High School Old Boys Dinner. He acknowledged [ 94 ]

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Table 3

Pupils in Wesleyan schools in Upper Burma, 1917

Schools

Boys

Girls

Total

Mandalay Boys Anglo-Vernacular High School Mandalay AV Girls School Mandalay, Thameedawzay Mixed Vernacular Mandalay Mahazaibon Mixed Vernacular Kyaukse Anglo-Vernacular Boys School Kyaukse Girls Vernacular School Kyaukse Thagaya Mixed Vernacular Pyawbwe Anglo-Vernacular Boys School Pyawbwe Shweda Vernacular School Pakokku Anglo-Vernacular Boys School Pakokku Girls Boarding School Pakokku, Myintha Vernacular School Pakokku, Khandaw Mixed Vernacular School Pakokku Yesagyo Anglo-Vernacular School Pakokku Shegu Mixed Vernacular Pakokku (Sunninghill) Mixed Vernacular Pakokku Ma-U Mixed Vernacular Pakokku Sadiketan Mixed Vernacular Pakokku Shwechaung Mixed Vernacular Salin AV School Salin Paunglin Venacular School Monywa Anglo-Vernacular Boys School Monywa Vernacular Girls School Monywa Vernacular Mixed School Monywa Shaukkla Vernacular Mixed School Monywa Lay-zin Vernacular Mixed School Monywa Kambya Mixed Vernacular School Monywa Hmangyo Vernacular Mixed School Kalaw Anglo-Vernacular Boys School Aungban Vernacular School Total for District

263 31 29 32 73 13 8 73 8 309 2 24 20 86 14 2 9 10 37 140 12 184 19 6 – 17 8 11 36 22 1,498

2 70 14 15 2 51 12 2 4 15 66 16 22 40 27 23 39 25 13 14 39 16 47 2 – 25 24 18 7 6 656

265 101 43 47 75 64 20 75 12 324 68 40 42 126 41 25 48 35 50 154 51 200 66 8 – 42 32 29 43 28 2,154

Source: 1917.

SOAS/WMMS/Minutes, FBN2/Burma District Synod Minutes, 31 December

‘his indebtedness to mission schools and to the missionaries’ and made special mention of Shepherd who had come thousands of miles to Pyawbwe ‘where only three people spoke English’. He also recalled how he had been inspired by the Baptist missionary motto at Judson College – Service and Sacrifice. The ninety Old Boys present listened intently and fondly remembered their own schooldays. Like U Ba Yin, they had been schoolboys in the early 1920s. Most were Buddhists who [ 95 ]

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now occupied important posts in Mandalay. They were fine advertisements for Wesleyan education, and together they applauded U Ba Yin’s ‘brave speech’.14 At the time it was impossible to tell that 1917 would be the highwater mark of Wesleyan education. However, one school burned down in 1918 and shortages of teachers closed two others. It left three fewer schools, sixty-one fewer pupils and started a downward trend that was to continue year after year. The reasons for the decline were deep seated. In the first place the Wesleyans were less well resourced than many of their rivals, as events in 1903 showed. They watched enviously as an ‘American professor’ turned up as Principal of the ABM High School, and large numbers of Europeans arrived to teach in a new Roman Catholic High School in Mandalay. Suspicion mounted that the Roman Catholics were about to snaffle all the available government education grants, prompting Bestall to warn of popish plots.15 The Missionary Society in London responded by sending two promising young missionaries – Rev. Bradford went to Monywa and Rev. Phillips to the boys’ school in Mandalay – but they were drops in the ocean. Threats rained in from all directions. A year later the ABM and Anglican missions opened new high schools in Mandalay, signalling the arrival of yet more European and American teachers.16 The second problem was the shortage of teachers. The Wesleyan schools found it impossible to compete with the salaries of teachers in government schools.17 In 1906 the second-master in a government National School could earn Rs 200 a month, almost twice as much as a senior teacher in a Wesleyan school. In 1904 Covis D’Silva, one of the Wesleyan Singhalese catechists, ‘yielded to the call of government’ by taking a job in a government school and doubling his salary overnight.18 In any case, after 1914 graduate teachers were at a premium. Burmese graduates could earn Rs 300 per month in government schools and most British teachers had been ‘swallowed up’ up by the Great War.19 The system of government grants was another problem. After matriculation, many ambitious students left Upper Burma to work in Rangoon. They left behind them unfilled job vacancies. The Director of Public Instruction tried to encourage mission schools to enrol ever more students. He offered generous building grants and was prepared to refund half the salary costs of missionary teachers. Rumours that the cash bonanza was running out triggered fierce competition between the missionary societies. Moreover, the grant system was unreliable and it caused much internal strife. Missionaries, desperate to match government grants, tried to squeeze money out of the cash-strapped Society in London. [ 96 ]

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After 1920 the tripartite support for mission schools (government, employers and Buddhist parents) began to fall apart. Government had less money to spend, employers had fewer jobs to offer and parents were being badgered by pongyis. As a consequence the Wesleyans began to open Sunday schools. They were free and were not subject to government regulation. They also taught English, and consequently they were popular, even among Buddhist parents.20 The existing Wesleyan Anglo-Vernacular High Schools were still very prestigious – turning out businessmen, doctors, lawyers, teachers and national politicians. They were elitist, of course, but the other denominations were playing the same game. In 1923 a Baptist report let the cat out of the bag. It acknowledged that ‘one hundred Christian merchants, lawyers, doctors and teachers are more important than one hundred Christian coolies’.21 It was not a very Christian sentiment but it was pragmatic and redolent of the hubristic claims of English public schools at the time. At the other end of the social scale Wesleyan vernacular schools served people at the bottom of the heap. Trouble festered in these single-teacher schools which were unglamorous, basic and poorly resourced. Most of them were tucked away in remote villages, but several Wesleyan vernacular schools were located in the poorer districts of Mandalay where they became involved in bitter little ‘turfwars’. The ‘overwhelming resistance’ of local Buddhists forced one school to close. Another clung on by its fingernails on a dusty road in a shanty suburb where a teacher taught fifteen pupils in a Buddhist ‘rest shed’ in full view of passers-by.22 A Baptist missionary put his finger on the problem when he said, ‘Whatever disturbs the school undermines the church.’23 Mission schools had to be all things to all men – Christian flagships, inculcators of skills, carers for the poor, shapers and movers of Burmese society, and bastions of the colonial ideal. It was not surprising, therefore, that they came under attack from many directions. Local Buddhists began flexing their muscles during the early 1920s. In 1922 a Buddhist Middle School was established in Monywa to compete with the Wesleyan Mission School. Buddhist-organised strikes in Pyawbwe sapped the morale of the Wesleyan AngloVernacular School and in Mandalay pongyis made life difficult for Buddhist boys attending Christian schools.24 Fewer than 6 per cent of the pupils in Wesleyan AV schools came from Wesleyan homes and the proportion declined each year.25 Other Protestant missions were affected in the same way. In 1931 the feisty Baptist missionary, Miss Parrot, complained that only 27 of the 500 boys in the flagship ABM Kelly High School were Christians. It was, she said, ‘a Buddhist school with a Christian Superintendent and staff’.26 [ 97 ]

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Religious antagonism was just one of several difficulties facing mission schools. Money lay at the root of most problems. As has already been mentioned, the system of government grants was unpredictable and unreliable. Grants were initially given to cover discrepancies between fee income and actual running costs. The Government announced without warning in February 1920 that it would pay only half the difference.27 The Wesleyans were hardest hit. They had bigger loans to pay off than the other societies and proportionately more AngloVernacular schools. An obscure method of accounting meant that AV schools faced the biggest shortfall in funding. The Wesleyans faced a stark choice. They could either put up school fees dramatically (thereby angering parents) or request bigger subsidies from the Missionary Committee in London. The Society was strapped for cash and had become impatient with the never-ending stream of requests from Burma. Meanwhile frequent changes in grant procedures made it impossible for the missionaries to budget properly, so teachers’ salaries were often paid very late.28 No sooner had Chapman succeeded Sheldon as Chairman in March 1920, than he was summoned to a meeting of all the missionary societies at Judson College in Rangoon.29 It was a dismal occasion and the delegates decided to send a stinging letter to the Lieutenant Governor complaining about the lack of notice given for funding changes. To Chapman’s relief, the letter also specifically asked that the Wesleyans be given special consideration. Their deficit now stood at Rs 9,220.30 The Government Secretary, H. Tonkinson, denied that the notice was inadequate but agreed that the Wesleyans should be made an exception because of the size of their deficit.31 Chapman was not placated. He was annoyed that Sheldon had made no provision for the anticipated shortfall, and feared that the present grant reduction was the ‘thin end of the wedge’.32 His pessimism was justified. Twelve more reductions in government funding followed in quick succession. Dr Chaney of ABM described it as an ‘ever closing circle of restrictions on our mission schools’.33 Government budget deficits necessitated these reductions in expenditure, but it made the pill no easier to swallow.34 Public finances came under increasing pressure until the crash of 1929–30.35 Money worries were soon overtaken by the University Boycott in December 1920. The Boycott caught both missionaries and government officials off guard. The organisers, a group of ‘politically-minded, patriotic and serious’ secular nationalist students, were protesting against the Rangoon University Act. They claimed that it would establish an elitist national university in imitation of Oxford and Cambridge, and lead to the exclusion of many Burmese students.36 [ 98 ]

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In 1921 the boycott spread, first to Judson College and then to secondary schools throughout the country. The boycotters focused on mission schools in particular, accusing them of corroding Burmese culture.37 The missionaries suspected (with some justification) that the boycott was an excuse to import Gandhi’s ‘non-cooperation movement’ into Burma.38 The University Boycott broke new ground. It was a national cause célèbre and brought together GCBA leaders, students and pongyis in a combined protest.39 By contrast the YMBA footwear campaign of 1916 had been limited in scope and local in scale. The Wesleyan missionaries instinctively opposed the boycott because of YMBA involvement and they supported the University Act on the grounds that it would weed out ‘inefficient undergraduates’. ‘Storms of political and religious unrest’ erupted during 1921. Students stayed away from schools and roamed around the streets of Monywa and Mandalay in threatening gangs.40 Buddhist sympathisers opened new ‘national schools’, causing several mission schools to close. The missionaries argued that ‘national’ simply meant ‘Buddhist’, although technically they were schools ‘wholly independent of both government and missionary supervision’. In 1922 Synod reported that no Wesleyan schools or mission stations had had to close despite being ‘hampered here and threatened yonder’. It rather smugly pointed out that three-quarters of the students had boycotted some government schools.41 The missionaries debated among themselves as to whether the boycott was justified. Some sympathised with its ‘legitimate nationalistic aspirations’, while others claimed presumptuously that only the Church represented the ‘truest political aspirations of the Burmese’ and knew ‘the secret of all moral and spiritual and political advancement’.42 However, they all welcomed the news that several Wesley High School Old Boys ‘of weight, intellect and character’ were attempting to moderate the behaviour of the boycotters.43 By the end of 1922 ‘political and religious opposition’ was abating and the missionaries noted that the Burmans were a little friendlier than before.44 The improvement was fragile. Local skirmishing and parental opposition to Christian vernacular schools continued for many months.45 In a major policy U-turn, the Education Department recognised a new Buddhist Anglo-Vernacular School in Pakokku, and the Wesley Boys High School found difficulty in surviving the competition.46 Nationalists in Monywa busily persuaded parents to remove their children from Wesleyan mission schools and to place them in the Buddhist Middle and National High schools. The same thing happened in a number of villages and, for example, by the end of 1922 there were only eight pupils left in Thetkegyin village school near Monywa.47 [ 99 ]

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In 1923 it came as a great surprise to discover that the number of pupils attending Wesleyan Anglo-Vernacular schools had actually increased by 153.48 In fact the situation was very patchy. In Pyawbwe the Anglo-Vernacular School had still not fully recovered by 1924. It was up against tough opposition from the national school where the headmaster was ‘a much better man than the usual type we meet’.49 Conversely, there was a dramatic improvement in the Kyaukse Wesleyan AV School. Pupil numbers had initially plummeted from 150 to 30 because of fierce competition from the nearby national school, then for some inexplicable reason the national school collapsed. The teacher had to be paid off in second-hand furniture in lieu of his salary and the school closed altogether in 1924. To rub salt into the wound, the chairman of the governors put his son into the Wesleyan school. It was around this time that responsibility for vernacular education passed to locally elected school boards. Young (hardly the greatest of diplomats) was appointed to the Kyaukse School Board which he described as a ‘bear garden’. Its proceedings were spiced up by an ‘old fashioned Buddhist’ School Inspector who despised Kyaukse people.50 Although nationalist agitation had subsided by 1924, Rev. W.J. Noble, the new Missionary Society Secretary, was not complacent. He warned the missionaries that it was not enough to ‘be Christian’ and that they had no right to prevent Burmans from opening their own schools. Their only duty, he said, was to ensure that Wesleyan schools were efficient and well maintained.51 The nationalist writer U Aye Kyaw went much further. He accused mission schools of catering for the rich and of perpetuating a ‘plantation economy’ mentality. He predicted that very few mission-school pupils would fulfil their dreams of becoming highflyers, but were destined to be low-ranking pen-pushers.52 ‘Good news’ stories circulated in 1925. Sheldon (who had just returned to Burma as a ‘rank-and-file’ missionary) stood in Pakokku High School with tears rolling down his cheeks, as 400 pupils lustily sang Christian hymns in front of ‘a board with the names of two missionaries, teachers and forty-two pupils who had served the Empire during the Great War’.53 Moreover the Wesleyan schools were still full, despite fierce ‘opposition from the National Buddhist Schools’.54 It was the lull before yet another storm. The boycott had no sooner died down than the next crisis loomed up. This one was engineered by a group of senior Burmese politicians led by Sir Maung Gyi. He introduced the so-called ‘Conscience Clause’ in the Legislative Assembly.55 The Clause was intended to hit mission schools hardest, and indeed it did. It prohibited religious worship and religious instruction in schools [ 100 ]

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unless parents gave their specific permission. Schools in breach of the Clause became ineligible for building grants. Most Burmans considered it perfectly reasonable, but the rules changed with bewildering rapidity and caused a good deal of confusion. It was unclear, for example, whether the Conscience Clause applied to day schools only or to boarding schools as well.56 One missionary dismissed the rumpus as a storm in a teacup. In his school only one parent (who was not a Buddhist, but a Brahmin) had objected to religious worship.57 Religion had become such an explosive political issue that colonial officials scurried around warning missionaries that they should not say disparaging things about Buddhism.58 Most missionaries abhorred political correctness and insisted that good old-fashioned religious instruction was ‘necessary for maintaining discipline’.59 They suspected that ‘unscrupulous agitators’ were using the Conscience Clause as a political weapon.60 The Lieutenant Governor tended to agree with them, and off-the-record he told Young that the Clause was ‘politically motivated’.61 Much to the dismay of the missionaries, the Clause was extended to cover residential hostels. Furthermore, pupils were required to opt into (not out of) religious activities. Rev. Vincent Shepherd fumed at the bureaucracy. He had to display the Conscience Clause prominently on notice boards at Pakokku High School and then request ‘the parents of every new boy to sign a declaration waiving any objection to Christian instruction’.62 The supporters of the Clause felt equally strongly. A leader in the Rangoon Gazette in March 1931 pointed out that the lion’s share of tax revenues came from Burmese taxpayers. It argued that no Buddhist money should be used to finance Christian indoctrination, and complained that mission schools produced ‘cultureless’ students.63 The battles raged on into the 1930s. The rich and devoutly evangelical Miss Colgate must have wondered what had hit her when immediately after she had donated vast sums to the ABM Girls School in Maymyo the school was forced to choose between ‘teaching the Bible’ and ‘receiving Government grants’.64 Shepherd was convinced that the Government was about to sequester mission schools altogether.65 In November 1933 he demanded assurances from the Education Minister that this was not the intention.66 The reply hardly mattered for by this time new tidal waves of nationalist unrest were breaking over the schools in Upper Burma. In February 1936 Rev. Clement Chapman attended an emergency meeting of the University Council in Rangoon. Students were on strike again and ‘the movement was . . . spreading to the whole country’. Examinations at the Mandalay Intermediate College had [ 101 ]

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been boycotted and high school examinations throughout Burma had to be postponed.67 Boarders at Wesley High School Pakokku refused to attend Sunday morning service. Even the local pongyis disapproved of this discourtesy and ‘the whole thing fizzled out’.68 The ‘growing spirit of nationalism’ at Wesley High School Mandalay lasted a bit longer.69 However, by May 1936 the wave of school strikes seemed to have collapsed mainly due to lack of support from ‘parents and elders’. The exams were held as usual in June.70 Emotions died down temporarily. The schools returned to normal and for a few months they remained relatively peaceful. Tensions rose again in Upper Burma during the latter part of 1938 and a series of extremely violent episodes erupted in January 1939. They have received little scholarly attention, although Taylor remarked that U Saw ‘encouraged students’ in his campaign to oust Dr Ba Maw, and N.C. Sen noted en passant that ‘towards the end of 1938, students again became troublesome’.71 These were understatements. Things looked very different to people on the ground. For nationalist students the next few months were euphoric, but they were catastrophic as far as the Wesleyan missionaries were concerned. News that the Methodist schools were being attacked filtered into Wesley Church Mandalay where Synod was meeting in January 1939. The police were overstretched and Burmese newspapers had inflamed ‘the public with gross exaggeration’. The ‘formlessness of the unrest’ was perplexing because the protestors made no ‘formulated demands’. They seemed only to believe that ‘self-government is better than good government’.72 Alarming bits of news filtered into the Synod proceedings from time to time. In one session members heard that Mandalay Girls High School was ‘surrounded by a mob of school children and ruffians’ and that they were shouting insults at teachers and terrified pupils inside the school. The military police eventually released the pupils at 6.00 p.m., and Synod members could hear the mob outside, parading around the city ‘shouting for murder and destruction’. The Girls High School remained closed for the next two months.73 Mr Hawtin, headmaster of Wesley Boys High School Monywa, had been attending Synod. After it was over he caught the train back to Monywa and arrived to find an armed mob of about 200 besieging his school. They threatened individuals by name and shouted abuse at hysterical pupils trapped inside the school. The Burmese District Magistrate refused to take any action, and the District Superintendent of Police and the Senior District Officer were both out of town. When they returned, they despatched military police to the school and violent scuffles broke out as ringleaders were arrested. The police escorted the pupils out of the school to a chorus of catcalls and a barrage of missiles. [ 102 ]

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The mob finally dispersed at 11.00 p.m. and attacked Indian shops as they went. The police fired on the crowd.74 Similar events happened in Kyaukse.75 In Pakokku ‘a state of war had developed between the Principal and some of the strike leaders’.76 Lucy Wiatt, Principal of the American Baptist Mission Girls High School in Mandalay, was also involved, and she described what happened next.77 On 1 January 1939 the District Magistrate, U Ba Si, advised all schools to remain closed, and the next day the Mandalay head teachers attended a meeting in the Commissioner’s office. Schools where the pupils were loyal were told that they should open, and later that day the Government instructed all schools to reopen on specified dates. The date for the ABM Girls School was 4 January. However, on that day picketers began gathering at the school gates at 3.00 a.m., and a mob of 200 refused to allow people in or out.78 At 8.30 a.m. the District Superintendent of Police rushed in and promised to clear the protestors away later in the day. Lucy Wiatt realised that the police were ‘in a very ticklish spot since the death of a student, Aung Kyaw, during a baton charge in Rangoon a couple of weeks ago’. As the day wore on the number of picketers and the barrage of noise steadily increased. Finally six schoolgirls shouted out ‘thabeit-hmaukbybe’ (we have struck) and rushed out to join the strikers, knocking over one of the missionaries – Alice Thayer – and leaving her badly bruised and shaken.79 At about 11.00 a.m. twenty girl strikers smashed through the gate. They marched around the compound, shouting and trying to get into rooms upstairs, terrifying the schoolgirls as they went. Then there was a lull until after lunch when more strikers arrived. They ‘bellowed and shrieked until they were hoarse’. Lucy Wiatt noticed that there were ‘many yellow robes sprinkled through the street’. Later in the afternoon, three boys from the Student Union demanded the personal effects of the six girls who had gone over to the picketers. Lucy Wiatt said she would only hand them over to the girls themselves, although she suspected they would not return if they felt any sense of shame. During the evening things quietened down, and the girls were packed off ‘in gharry-loads with the teachers to private homes in town’. All the schools in Mandalay remained closed for several weeks. The compounds of the Methodist Girls School and the Women Workers’ house had also been surrounded by mobs of schoolchildren and ruffians of the town who shouted insults at those inside. All the entrances were closed for the whole day. The mob dispersed only when it was stated that the school would close. They promised ‘to reassemble at the first sign of the school reopening’.80 The Mandalay head teachers met regularly during the next few weeks, and the strikers sent out propaganda leaflets from their headquarters at the National School. [ 103 ]

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The defining moment arrived on 8 February when the authorities arrested five of the strike leaders – three students and two pongyis. Nationalist sympathisers were outraged and a huge crowd of 10,000– 20,000 people gathered to protest at the Eindawa Pagoda in Mandalay on 9 February. The next day they processed towards the Court House demanding the release of the prisoners. The crowd refused to disperse when the police and troops of the Burma Rifles stopped the procession on South Moat Road. The soldiers opened fire, killing seventeen people and injuring others.81 One of the casualties was a fifteen-year-old Wesley Boys High School pupil. He was not an ardent boycotter but had been coerced into the movement. His family tried to persuade him to leave the strike headquarters at the National School and on the day of the procession the leaders of the protest said that he could stay behind. They changed their minds at the very last moment, thrust a banner in his hands and placed him at the front of the procession. He was shot when the troops opened fire, and he died later. The family were ‘wonderfully free from bitterness’, but the leaders of the protest insisted on taking his body away (against his parents’ wishes) to lie in state at the Eindawa Pagoda.82 A funeral ceremony was held for the seventeen victims on 17 March 193983 and 300,000 mourners gathered in Mandalay. The city came to a standstill.84 The huge procession left the Eindawa Pagoda and wended slowly through the streets. Lucy Wiatt described the events from her ringside seat at this remarkable ‘circus of life’: The procession was headed by sayadaws and hpongyis in cars, some carrying red and green flags, some black. Then came a group of men carrying wreaths, followed by girls in pick skirts and homespun jackets with red and black arm bands, and following them, a detachment of the Galons or the national army in their uniform khaki and green shirts. The coffins – fifteen in all – were on two wheeled carts, each drawn by young men or girls in uniforms. They were covered with red velvet, and the hammer-and-sickle emblem on the side and each bore the portrait of the dead person attached to the front. We saw many black armbands, a western innovation, and some red ones: Everything was very quiet and orderly. No one in the actual procession spoke at all, and the squeak of the carts and occasional low comments from the bystanders were the only sounds. All shops and bazaars in Mandalay were closed for the day, and more than one thousand Burmese men shaved their heads as a sign of mourning for those killed.85

Seventeen young men were buried on 17 March 1939, but a whole era was buried with them. All passion was now spent and the protests stuttered to a close.86 The Synod Letter of January 1940 explained that ‘for the time being, Burma is peaceful’.87 Sheldon’s prediction had come [ 104 ]

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true, for the awakening had come with ‘startling suddenness’, and ‘cherished institutions’ were being shaken.88 At the end of February, U Pu the new Premier, U Thwin the leader of the Rangoon Burmese Elders, and Ko Hla Shwe Vice President of the Student Union held talks.89 The Mandalay District Commissioner and head teachers were encouraged by this, and decided to reopen all the schools on 7 March 1939, although many students were unhappy about the terms of the settlement. Lucy Wiatt was encouraged to see that some responsible Burmans had accepted the need for a ‘strong moral and spiritual foundation’. She particularly admired the Chief Executive Officer of the Mandalay Municipality who was ‘a fine Christian man’. The ABM missionaries arranged to meet up with their Burmese neighbours. They felt that ‘only as we understand and love them deeply will they turn to us for help’. Her colleague Miss Reifsneider organised a series of ‘Burmese House Parties’. At one of them Lucy Wiatt noticed a group of young Buddhists listening ‘with absorbed interest’ as the Burmese CEO, an Anglo-Indian Headmaster and a businessman all ‘witnessed to the power of God’. She was pleased because ‘for so long we have met with so much indifference and opposition in this strong Buddhist country’.90 Elsewhere in Mandalay unrest flared up periodically and the Baptist schools continued to have problems until June 1939.91 In March, strikers attempted to burn down the Wesley High School in Monywa. The missionaries felt thoroughly let down by the Government which insisted that all striking pupils must be allowed to return to schools without punishment. It created disciplinary problems. In December 1939, the headmaster of Wesley Boys High School Mandalay reported that ‘intense nationalism’ was still persisting and was disrupting school routines. The legacy of bitterness caused by the strikes left its mark on the minds of many of the boys.92 Although it was widely reported that many pupils had deserted mission schools, Synod claimed that the Wesleyan schools had actually gained fifty pupils and that Monywa High School ‘was still influential in the life of the town’. Pakokku was said to be calmer than it had been for a long time, and apparently many Burmese parents still felt that mission schools offered ‘better teaching quality and greater value for money’.93 However, all was not well. Several boys had left Mandalay Boys High School in 1940 after the ‘anti-Christian-school campaign of the previous year’. The headmaster, William Holden, sacked some of the most troublesome students, complaining that ‘intense nationalism . . . makes school work difficult’.94 To add to the difficulties there were also subversive ‘Muslim influences’ in the school. The students were condemnatory of Britain and the Empire. In vain Holden tried to [ 105 ]

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persuade them that internationalism was better than nationalism. It was a forlorn task.95 The High School in Pakokku was like a powder keg and in 1940 a ‘spirit of greed, selfishness and hate’ fuelled religious and racial divisions. The teachers were a ragbag of ‘Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Burmans and Indians’ and the 350 pupils were almost all Buddhists. The strike of the previous year had left a legacy of mutual distrust and a state of war existed ‘between the Principal and the strike leaders’.96 In the riots of 1939 forty pupils had left Wesley Boys School Kyaukse to enrol at the National Anglo-Vernacular School and several Indian boys had departed for India. Moreover, the vocational classes in the slojd workshops were proving to be unpopular with parents.97 Methodist mission schools had been dragged into the eye of a national storm and the missionaries were angered by ‘unscrupulous politicians’ who exploited school strikes. U Saw, for example, had used students to bring down Dr Ba Maw in 1939.98 They were bitterly frustrated when he decreed that no student should be punished for any action during a strike.99 It seriously undermined the authority of Heads and teachers.100 The student disturbances of 1938–39 damaged several successful mission schools in Upper Burma and separated them from their surrounding communities. In 1944 the exiled Governor, Sir Reginald Dorman Smith, promised that Methodist mission schools would be returned to their former glory after the war. It was a hollow gesture. By 1945 the school buildings had been irreparably damaged, and Methodist education never recovered.101

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

J.W.C. Dougall, ‘The Case for and against Mission Schools’, Journal of the Royal African Society, 38:150 (1939), 91. It is clear that Burma was not unique. H. James, Governance and Civil Society in Myanmar: Education, Health and Environment, London, Routledge Curzon, 2005, pp. 95–97. Winston and Brown, ‘New Mission in Upper Burma: A First Report’. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Burma District Synod Minutes, 31 December 1889. The schools were: Mandalay English School, Mandalay Boys Training School, Mandalay Girls’ Boarding School, Kyaukse AV School and Pakokku AV School. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/Burma District Synod, January 1893. Girls were often removed ‘on frivolous pretexts’ or failed to return after holidays. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Phillips–Olver, 23 December 1899. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Phillips–Findlay, 28 December 1902. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Phillips–Findlay, 13 March 1904. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/District Report for 1890, 12 January 1891. James, Governance and Civil Society, p. 78. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Thomas–Olver, 23 May 1899; FBN1/ Bradford–Olver, 6 November 1899; Minutes/FBN1-2/Pakokku Circuit Report, 31 December 1912. Elders from Pauk had also asked Thomas to open a school. The main employers were (a) Municipal and District Headquarters in Mandalay, Pakokku, Monywa, Kyaukse and Pyawbwe, (b) Irrawaddy Flotilla Company in

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13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

Mandalay and Pakokku, (c) Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation and (d) Burma Railways. In 1917 the distribution of pupils in Wesleyan schools was as follows: Pakokku (ten schools,799 pupils); Mandalay, (four schools, 464 pupils); Monywa, (six schools, 377 pupils); Kyaukse, (three schools, 221 pupils); Salin, (two schools, 205 pupils); Pyawbwe, (two schools, 87 pupils); Southern Shan Hills, (two schools, 71 pupils). SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Shepherd–Rattenbury, 19 December 1940. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 17 June 1941. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Winston–Olver, 24 December 1897. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/General Letter from Synod, 12 January 1903. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/General Letter from Synod, 12 January 1904. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Findlay, 4 December 1906. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Goudie, 29 August 1919 and 2 January 1920. Sunday school registrations were notoriously inconsistent (1,065 pupils in 1911 and 682 in 1912). American Baptist Foreign Mission Society/Cornell University Library/Rare and Manuscript Collections/Records # 4424, Report of the Education Committee, 1923. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1/Bestall–Olver, 24 December 1899. American Baptist Foreign Mission Society Records /Cornell University Library/ Rare and Manuscript Collections/Records #4424, Dr C.E. Chaney: ‘Burma Administration Report’, 1935. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Mandalay Circuit Report, December 1922. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1/31 December 31 1917, Numerical Return for Colleges, High Schools and AV Schools. American Baptist Foreign Mission Society/Cornell University Library/Rare and Manuscript Collections/Records # 4424, Miss Parrot–Miss Helen Tufts, ABM Women’s Secretary, 18 April 1931. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Goudie, 26 January 1920. Sheldon did admit that missions had been warned before February 1920. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Chapman–Goudie, 8 March 1920. It was held in the office of Dr Gilmore, Principal of Judson College. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Chapman–Goudie, 25 March 1920. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/H. Tonkinson, internal memo, 19 April 1920. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Chapman–Goudie, 15 May 1920. American Baptist Foreign Mission Society/Cornell University Library/Rare and Manuscript Collections/Records # 4424: Dr C.E. Chaney, Burma Administration Report, 1935. See Owen Hillman, ‘Education in Burma’, Journal of Negro Education, 15:3 (1946), the Government’s control of schools ‘was exercised solely through its power to give grants’. See Brown, A Colonial Economy in Crisis, pp. 34–48. U Lu Pe Win, History of the 1920 University Boycott, Rangoon, U Lu Pe Win, 1970. U Kaung, ‘History of Education in Burma before the British Conquest and After’, Journal of the Burma Research Society (December 1963), 75. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN1-2/Burma District Synod, General Letter, January 1921. Ghosh, Brave Men of the Hills, p. 169, and Taylor, The State in Burma, p. 180. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod, General Letter, January 1921. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod, General Letter, and Local Committee Minutes, 6–14 January 1921, and Burma District Synod, General Letter, 10 January 1922. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod, Minutes, 3–5 January 1922.

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65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod, General Letter, 10 January 1922. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod, Annual Report, December 1922. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Mandalay Circuit Report, December 1922. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Pakokku Circuit Report, December 1922. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Monywa Circuit Report, December 1922. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod, General Letter, January 1923. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Pyawbwe Circuit Report, December 1922. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Young–Thompson, 15 June 1924. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Noble–Skinner, 17 December 1924. Aye Kyaw, The Voice of Young Burma, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1993, p. 19. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod Minutes, January 1925, and Correspondence/FBN2/Sheldon–Noble, 31 August 1926. Sheldon had been exonerated. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod Minutes, 5 November 1926. Sir Maung Gyi, Minister of Education in 1920; a student leader of the boycott, then a barrister, he had defended U Ottama. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod, General Letter, 8 January 1925. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Skinner–Noble, 25 January 1925. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/J.P. Bulkeley (Education Secretary)–Young, January 1930. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod Minutes, 5 November 1926. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Young–Noble, 6 November 1930. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Young–Noble, 13 June 1931. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN2/Shepherd–Noble, 15 July 1931. Rangoon Gazette, March 1931, Primary Education Report, quoted in Maung Maung, From Sangha to Laity, p. 127. American Baptist Foreign Mission Society/Cornell University Library/Rare and Manuscript Collections/Records # 4424, Miss Parrott–Miss Colgate, 15 December 1930. Miss Colgate was heir to the Colgate toothpaste empire. The Colgates, a Baptist family, were related to the Burma ABM missionary Rev. Hascall. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN2-3/Shepherd–Noble, 4 Sept 1933. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN2-3/Shepherd–Noble, 27 November 1933. Sir Maung Gyi succeeded a Christian, U Kyaw Din, as Education Minister. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Chapman–Noble, February 1936. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN2/Wesley High School Pakokku Report, December 1936. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Wesley High School Mandalay, Report, December 1936. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Chapman–Noble, 8 June 1936. Sen, Peep into Burma Politics, p. 60, and Taylor, The State in Burma, p. 202. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod, General Letter, 11 January 1939. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Chapman–Noble, January 1939. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Hawtin–Chapman, 18 January 1939. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Chapman–Noble, 30 January 1939. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN2/Wesley High School Pakokku Report, December 1939. American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society/Cornell University Library/Rare and Manuscript Collections/Records #4424, Lucy Wiatt, 4 January 1939. School Strike at ABM Girls School Mandalay. The Anglican padre, Mr Higginbotham, managed to smuggle a teacher through the picket line.

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She was an ABM missionary in Mandalay. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN2/Mandalay Mission Report, December 1939. The incident happened at the corner of South Moat and West Moat Roads. The Mandalay Press communiqué said several warnings were given and that many protestors were armed with dahs (knives). Eleven people were killed and nineteen injured (all of them adult males). American Baptist Foreign Mission Society/Cornell University Library/Rare and Manuscript Collections/Records # 4424, Lucy Wiatt–home friends, 3 March 1939. The boy’s sister, a teacher at the ABM Girls School, told Lucy Wiatt the story. The exact number of victims is not certain. Seventeen dead is usually quoted, but press reports said eleven; Lucy Wiatt counted fifteen coffins. That same evening it was reported that Dr Ba Maw’s government had fallen. Maung Maung, From Sangha to Laity, pp. 183–184. American Baptist Foreign Mission Society/Cornell University Library/Rare and Manuscript Collections/Records # 4424, Lucy Wiatt–home friends, 3 March 1939. She had been invited by a Burmese family to watch the funeral from their house. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN2/Reports of Mandalay District Work, Mandalay Mission and Pakokku, Chauk, Pyawbwe and Monywa Annual Circuit Reports, December 1939. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN2/Burma District Synod, General Letter, 6 January 1940. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN1-2/Sheldon–Goudie, 29 Augustust 1919. The President and Secretary of ABSU were still in prison. American Baptist Foreign Mission Society/Cornell University Library/Rare Books and Manuscript Collections/Records # 4424, Lucy Wiatt–home friends, 3 March 1939. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Shepherd–Noble, 6 June 1939. The headmaster of Mandalay Baptist School was dismissed for mismanagement, and immediately became a pongyi. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN3/Wesley Boys High School Mandalay Report, December 1939. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Mandalay Mission, Report, Wesley High School, Report, and Pakokku Circuit Report, December 1939; Uncatalogued/MRP/4/Firth Papers: Burma District Report, 1940; and Uncatalogued/MRP/6A/Firth Papers: Burma District Report, 1939. Rev. William Holden. Southport 1910; educated King George V Grammar School; printing industry; Handsworth College; served in Burma; married Hetty Hodson in Mandalay, one son, Bill; Principal of Wesley High School Mandalay; Acting Principal Wesley College, Ceylon (World War II); commissioned in CAS(B), taught at Union School Kalaw and Ministerial Training College, Mandalay. Wrote Burmese biblical commentaries and translated Methodist Order of Service; circuits in Accrington, London, Basildon; died in Glastonbury 2008. He was direct, blunt and scholarly. SOAS/WMMS/Minutes/FBN4/Report, Rev W. Holden, on Wesley Boys High School, 1939. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Wesley Boys High School Pakokku, Headmaster’s Report, 1939. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Wesley Boys High School Kyaukse, Headmaster’s Report, 1939. For slojd see Chapter 2 n. 88. Taylor, The State in Burma, p. 203. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6A/Firth Papers: Burma District Report, 1940. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Mandalay Mission Report, December 1939. SOAS/MMS/Burma/Correspondence/FBN3/Shepherd–Rattenbury, 23 June 1944.

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Evacuation and exile

The war seemed a long way off in 1941. It was still a phoney war in Upper Burma. There was no black-out or rationing. The townships were more peaceful than they had been since 1913.1 Pupils at Mandalay Girls High School held jumble-sales in aid of English Methodists, and Christians in Chauk sent £10 to help the British war effort.2 Europeans and wealthy Indians subscribed to a war-fund that raised Rs 2.5m. The civil strife of past decades had subsided but it was not forgotten. Chapman was still angered by ‘the treachery of the Burmese Thakin elements’, and Firth hoped they would remember that they enjoyed freedom only because they were ‘members of a great commonwealth’.3 The thought was unlikely to have crossed their minds, but in any case the nationalist leaders had gone to ground. People huddled around radios anxiously listening to the news. On Christmas Day 1941 the King’s broadcast cast a spell and forged ‘new bonds of loyalty’ and inspired four boys in Mawlaik to volunteer for military service.4 The sense of make-believe was compounded by letters from England. A missionary in Kyaukse asked Noble if it would be safe for his family to sail home. He was assured that passenger liners were perfectly safe.5 Rattenbury (Noble’s successor) was a master of spin – the blitz was ‘badly aimed bombs’ and England was unfazed by invasion threats. Rattenbury remonstrated with the Methodist Recorder for publishing photographs of bombed-out churches and urged the missionaries to take no notice of them. His letters concluded with rip-roaring phrases like ‘our people are so optimistic’ and the ‘Church and the Nation are in good heart’.6 Rattenbury quaintly believed that China would march to rescue Asia. In December 1941 he wrote that ‘Admiral Tojo would have something to think about’ if only there was ‘a nice hefty Chinese army’ down in Rangoon.7 Dorothy Mackley fed the fantasy when she described Kyaukse during Thadingyut (the Festival of Lights). Chinese [ 110 ]

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trucks from the Burma Road ‘hung their little oil lamps and candles’ making ‘an occasion of festive delight’.8 Rattenbury attended a rally in Westminster Central Hall to salute ‘China, the new ally’. He was cock-a-hoop when General Wavell met Chiang Kai Shek (Commanderin-Chief of the Chinese Army) in Lashio, north Burma.9 Late in 1941 half-hearted war preparations began in Mandalay. No-one took them too seriously. The missionaries tried to persuade sceptical schoolboys that the British war aims were honourable and U Po Tun grumbled that the black-out would not prevent bombing raids, but it would encourage dacoits.10 Air-raid sirens were tested, weaponstraining began and trenches were dug at a leisurely pace.11 People seemed more interested in the activities of former mission-school boys in the Cabinet and Churchill’s fisticuffs with U Saw in London.12 The mood in Mandalay changed abruptly in December 1941. The bricolage of fear, cynicism and nervous anticipation gave way to blind panic. The mood was heightened by the sight of European refugees packing into Wesley Church for prayer and carol-singing.13 White strangers clasped one another in desperate acts of fellowship during these last moments of Empire. The omniscient Rattenbury had warned that there would be ‘bombings here and there’, and sure enough Japanese planes bombed Rangoon on 23 December 1941. Willans was in the thick of it.14 The radio warned people not to listen to rumours, but the destruction was clear for all to see. ‘Fires had broken out among the bamboo and wooden houses leaving nothing but charred ruins . . . the streets were silent, houses were bolted and barred and the shops were closed . . . Social and racial distinctions’ disappeared.15 The BBC reported 600 casualties. Rattenbury congratulated Chapman on coming ‘right into the picture’.16 Suddenly the world had turned on its head. In January 1942, immediately after the bombing of Rangoon, Synod assembled in Mandalay.17 ‘There was no real panic or anxiety’ but it was decided that in future all furloughs should be taken locally.18 Afterwards the missionaries returned to their mission stations to get on with their work and to prepare for the worst.19 When Japanese planes bombed Buddhist monasteries it was hoped that Burmans might be persuaded to ‘throw in their lot with the British’. For the moment Mandalay was quiet – but dark. Symbolically ‘the light on the cross on the tower of the church had been extinguished’.20 Europeans were leaving Mandalay in droves, but Chapman insisted that the Methodist missionaries should stay and ‘carry on as normal’.21 He assured them that the Government’s evacuation plans would be implemented if need be. His case was not helped when the Baptist [ 111 ]

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missionaries failed to return from their annual meeting in Rangoon. The US consul had advised them to leave the country immediately.22 Chapman was unimpressed and even more determined that Methodist missionaries should stay. ‘We have a witness to bear’, he told them, ‘and there is a special opportunity.’23 Florence Cleaver was alarmed when she received a letter from Miss Porter, the Women’s Work Secretary. It warned her to avoid internment by the Japanese.24 The thought had never crossed her mind until that moment, but the sudden collapse of Rangoon made it seem quite possible. Journalists described Rangoon as ‘a city of the dead’ full of empty streets and deserted bazaars.25 Vivid eyewitness accounts circulated around Mandalay. The horrific experiences of ordinary people like Mi Mi Khaing, a student, and the midwife Daw Sein were chilling.26 Chapman wrote to tell Rattenbury that Mandalay was ‘cut off from Lower Burma’, but he added (clutching at straws) that the British Army was ‘on its way to defend Upper Burma’.27 Miss Mackley knew differently. She saw for herself that the British Army was in headlong retreat. She had just taken some students from Wesley Girls High School to the railway station in Kyaukse at the end of February 1942:28 All was silent; no sign apparently of any train coming from either direction ever again! Then suddenly signals began to appear for a train coming up the line from the south. Such a thing had never been heard of at that hour! We stood back as this phenomenon chugged and grunted slowly into the station then stopped. Immediately, out jumped the unmistakable figures of British Army Officers. A hasty glance up and down the train showed that it was full of British Army personnel, somewhat worse for wear, as far as the state of their uniforms and equipment were concerned, and at least two coaches at the rear of the train contained wounded. One of the officers gaped at me in utter amazement. ‘I say are you English? What are you doing here? You had better come along with us’, he urged. Naturally my young students were highly interested in this conversation! I explained that I wasn’t going anywhere; that I was just seeing my girls off. Upper Burma was obviously a different Burma from the one from which the travelling soldiers had just left in retreat. We discovered this was a whole detachment hurrying northwards after the debacle of the Sittang River . . . They assumed that Burma was a battlefield throughout its length and that all English people had long ago left the country, as they were about to do with all haste.29

Willans and his British and Foreign Bible Society colleagues saw things from another angle. They had joined the frantic exodus of civilians from Rangoon, and while the rest of his party made for Maymyo, Willans went to relieve Firth in Chauk. Chauk had become ‘a town of [ 112 ]

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men only’. All but the ‘essential workers’ had left. Everyone clutched their certificates of inoculation against cholera. Most Burmese families, fearing a breakdown in law and order, had fled long ago. The Union Church congregation had dwindled to nothing and European evacuees crammed into every available bit of accommodation.30 Meanwhile, Mandalay was heaving. ‘Hundreds or thousands’ of refugees had trekked in from Lower Burma. Poor Indian labourers and wealthy Rangoon bankers jostled together. The Rangoon Corporation occupied Mandalay Girls High School, the Rangoon Telegraphic Company took over Mandalay Boys High School, Monywa High School became Headquarters for the Director of Public Instruction and the Kyaukse Mission House housed the Chinese Authority.31 Pakokku High School building had become a hospital.32 Hawtin had left to join the Burma Army leaving his deputy, Mr Devar, in charge.33 Acheson was helping in the Evacuation Department when he discovered that private evacuations were to end in February 1942. All evacuation plans would have to go through the District Commissioner for Monywa. Work on the Kalewa–Tamu Road had been completed and evacuations were planned to commence from 1 March.34 Chapman was still reluctant to let his missionaries go, and promised that he personally would not leave ‘Mandalay unless ordered out’.35 The Leper Home Medical Superintendent, Dr Roy, took ‘his four motherless daughters to India’ leaving his young assistant, Dr Jamaldin, in charge. In fact the Home was almost empty.36 Chapman urged Burmese Christians to escape ‘to distant villages’ while they had the chance. Burmese preachers and schoolteachers were paid to the end of March. They were instructed to ‘look after the property’ and to ‘keep in touch’.37 At last Chapman agreed to allow the wives and children of missionaries to leave. He circulated evacuation instructions and wrote portentously, ‘God grant us all wisdom and courage to do all that we ought and can in the service of His Kingdom in Burma.’38 Miss Mackley was sent to Monywa with instructions to prepare the Women’s Work House in Monywa as a staging-post for missionaries escaping up the Chindwin.39 Vincent was commissioned to lead a group of women and children evacuees to the Indian frontier.40 Mandalay was bombed on 19 February 1942. The Upper Burma Club inside the Fort was destroyed and ten people were killed. No mission properties were damaged, but Mrs Sewell, the wife of Bernard Sewell, was in Mandalay Hospital after giving birth to a baby.41 She left hospital with her son on 26 February and immediately travelled to Monywa by train. In Mawlaik, Mrs Acheson was also expecting a baby. Her husband was away on government business, and her elderly parents [ 113 ]

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were staying with her.42 She was evacuated with a party of Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation wives.43 Chapman tried to keep track of all the missionary families. At regular intervals he assembled ‘inventories’ of their whereabouts. One read as follows. The Firths arrived in Mandalay from Chauk, the Sewells left for Monywa, Mrs Varney was on her way to Monywa by steamer and Varney was driving up-country via the Pakokku Hill tracts. Reed had brought his family to Mandalay from Kalaw, Miss Bush and Miss Cleaver were making their way to the Chin Hills, Mrs Acheson was in Mawlaik, Acheson was working somewhere and the army had evacuated the Hawtins. The next bulletin, assembled in March, reported that Miss Cleaver and Miss Bush had reached the Chin Hills, Mrs Hawtin and her two children had flown out to Chittagong and had arrived in Calcutta. The Sewell family had reached Mawlaik. Mrs Vincent, Mrs Reed and their children had joined Vincent’s party for the overland trek up the Chindwin. Reed was on his way from Kalaw to join Chapman and Firth in Mandalay.44 There was no news of the Holdens (bound for Australia) or the Leighs (bound for South Africa). Both families had gone on furlough in July 1941.45 In April 1942 Rattenbury confirmed that Rev. and Mrs Sewell, Mrs Vincent, Mrs Reed and seven children had arrived safely in Calcutta, and that Shepherd, Holmes and Kinchin had arrived in England.46 Chapman wrote to Rattenbury on 1 March 1942. It was his last letter from Mandalay. Rangoon was already in the hands of the military authorities. Government offices, banks and commercial firms had been evacuated to Mandalay and Maymyo. ‘The whole populace seems to be on the move,’ he said, and ‘the roads are a pathetic sight crowded with thousands of poor folk (mostly Indians) trying to walk to India! The trains, when running, are insufferably crowded, hundreds travelling in open trucks.’ Steamer services from Rangoon were no longer operating and the Government was sending ‘parties of European ladies to travel in convoy up the Chindwin and on to India’. Chapman planned to send the missionaries’ wives and children by train to Monywa, by steamer to Mawlaik and then on to India by road. He assured Rattenbury that everyone was safe and well. Rattenbury heard no more from Mandalay.47 Miss Merrick and Miss Robertson worked around the clock, feeding hundreds of evacuees in Mandalay Girls High School. Another party was staying in Mandalay Boys High School. Most Burmese church members had left Mandalay for surrounding villages. The Indian members realised they had outstayed their welcome and were waiting to be evacuated. All schools in Upper Burma had closed at the end of February 1942 and examinations had been abandoned. The shops [ 114 ]

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were closed and government agents seized all remaining stocks of rice. Chapman had enough rice to feed members of his staff. Several times a day air-raid alerts sounded, causing everyone to scuttle into trenches until the ‘all clear’ sounded. Eric and May Firth left for Mandalay as soon as Willans reached Chauk on 14 February. They arrived shortly before the first air raid.48 An evacuation office had been opened under the direction of Mr Kennedy of Steel Brothers. Firth volunteered to assist him and he became quite a key figure.49 Firth’s job was to record names of the thousands of refugees who poured in and out of the city. He also helped to arrange the flights from Shwebo to Chittagong which was now the only air-route out of Burma.50 At first only invalids, infants and the elderly were allowed to fly, but by mid-March as the Japanese got nearer to Mandalay, European women and children were allowed to go too. The evacuation of civilians from Burma was an operation of epic proportions.51 On 8 March, Firth and Chapman ordered all missionaries and their families to leave. The sense of finality was heightened by emotional farewells in Mandalay and by the tiny bundle each passenger carried. Firth accompanied groups of evacuees to Shwebo where they slept overnight in a marquee in the SPG compound. Each person was allowed only 16 lb of baggage so they wore as many clothes as possible in the sweltering heat. Army transport planes took the evacuees to Chittagong and during the two-hour flights they leaned against aluminium ledges, their baggage piled in the middle of the plane. Three flights took off daily during March 1942. Each one carried between twenty-four and fifty passengers.52 In Chittagong, the evacuees were taken to the English Club where they were fed and given ‘large square gin bottles’ filled with boiled water before travelling on to Calcutta by truck.53 The image of groups of forlorn Methodist women missionaries wandering around India clutching gin bottles is deeply touching. Mrs Hawtin and her children were in the first party on 10 March.54 Dorothy Mackley, Mrs Firth and Mrs Varney and her six-year-old son flew out on 26 March,55 and Mrs Chapman, Miss Merrick and Miss Robertson went on the last flight from Shwebo on 1 April.56 Miss Cleaver and Miss Bush had already gone to stay with a government official and his wife in Falam, in the northern Chin Hills. It was a planned holiday and they set off on an overcrowded steamer from Monywa to Kalewa, on which 700 Indian refugees, several of them with cholera, crouched on deck. At Kalewa they transferred to a smaller boat for the journey up the Kalay River to Kalemyo where they continued [ 115 ]

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by bullock cart to Tahan. Then they trekked on ponies over the mountains to Falam. Their host, Mr Naylor, had just heard that Rangoon had fallen and that the Japanese were advancing rapidly through Burma. He decided they should leave for India immediately and led a party of thirty Europeans by remote mountain passes to Aijal. They boarded open boats that sailed through churning rapids to the Dimapur railhead where they caught a train bound for Calcutta.57 Meanwhile Vincent had assembled his party of evacuees on a seething Mandalay Railway Station at the beginning of March 1942.58 Mrs Vincent, Mrs Reed, Mrs Sewell and their children (including the Sewells’ baby) were travelling with him. Cholera closed the route soon afterwards.59 Adults could take 60 lb of baggage and children 30 lb. At Monywa they transferred to a river steamer and slept on the open deck at night. The steamer ran aground on a sandbank and had to turn back to Monywa, but they eventually reached Mawlaik and continued up the Yu River to Yuva, where they transferred to a fleet of londwins (canoes).60 The boatmen mutinied at the Hlezeik transit camp and the party trudged on to the dirty camp in Tamu before continuing the thirty-six miles to the vast refugee entrepôt at Palel. The elderly and the very young were carried in doolies (hammocks) but everyone else had to walk seven miles a day for five days over gruelling mountain terrain.61 Along the way they came across heavy personal effects that had been discarded. At Palel Indian refugees were separated from Europeans and Anglo-Indians. Vincent’s party rode in a fleet of ancient buses to Imphal where they stayed in Mrs Shaw’s reception camp.62 They transferred to a different collection of ramshackle buses for the journey to Dimapur railhead where they continued by train and ferry to Calcutta. Sewell arrived in Calcutta soon afterwards in a very bad state, but Vincent had headed straight back to Burma from Dimapur.63 In March 1942, just before Mandalay was cut off from Rangoon, Chapman withdrew as much cash as he could from the mission account.64 He gave ‘a few hundred rupees to members of staff for emergency use’ and kept back a large sum to use in the evacuation. Chapman and his colleagues dug two small vaults underneath the District Headquarters and the garage of the Women’s Work bungalow. They buried valuables and ‘essential papers’ in them.65 By 3 April 1942 (Good Friday) most Burmese church members had left for jungle villages. Chapman, Firth and Reed were the last missionaries in Mandalay.66 Firth and U Po Tun (who had also remained in Mandalay) conducted a Good Friday service. Wesley Church was packed with refugees. The congregation dispersed at about 11.00 a.m. Firth and his colleagues had just sat down for coffee when the servants rushed in shouting that Japanese planes were approaching. There [ 116 ]

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7

Air raid on Mandalay, 3 April 1942.

had been no air-raid warning, but they ran outside and jumped into the trenches they had previously dug. Mayhem ensued. Incendiary bombs rained down and the bamboo and wooden houses of Mandalay blazed like tinder (figure 7).67 The Boys High School, the Principal’s house and Po Tun’s house were gutted within minutes. Firth and Reed tried to put out the fire in the church but they were driven back by the intense heat. Soon ‘only the brick walls and the tower’ remained.68 Flames fanned by a strong wind leapt through Mandalay. Firth went off to rescue papers from the Evacuation Office and Chapman made sure everyone was all right.69 People had no time ‘to gather up their belongings’ before streaming out of the city. An elderly English couple stood, dazed, in South Moat Road. ‘Hordes of people . . . some wounded, carried what they could.’ They were joined by ‘patients from the Civil Hospital, which got several bombs’, and by ‘wounded and sick Chinese troops who were housed in the Wesley Boys’ High School . . . all struggling along’. The English couple staggered into St Mary’s Anglican Church, two blocks from Wesley Church. It had escaped the flames although the ‘windows had all blown in’. They saw that a bomb had hit a gatepost and ‘killed five Indians who were in the ditch just outside the gate. Dead cattle and [ 117 ]

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gharri ponies were scattered all along the road.’70 It was a node point, a pivotal moment that divided past from future. Two days later, on Easter Sunday, Firth celebrated communion at St Mary’s while Chapman and Reed visited Christians in villages around the town.71 ‘Enormous fires’ were still raging. Four of the barracks inside the Fort had been destroyed and ‘the whole area south of “B” Road from 88th Street was damaged’.72 The city had no telephones, electricity or water supplies.73 In another air raid on 8 April high explosive bombs were dropped on the railway station and the electricity supply station. Patients fled from the Leper Home, the bazaars and shops closed and Mandalay became a ghost town. Chapman, Firth and Reed realised that they must leave immediately. They checked the vaults in which they had buried the valuables and gave some money to the servants.74 Then they packed their personal belongings into the car and drove out of Mandalay at 11.00 a.m. on 11 April 1942.75 There are so many haunting images. Thousands of people – wealthy businessmen, colonial officials, labourers, clerks, teachers, hairdressers, street-cleaners, missionaries, bookmakers, barristers, schoolchildren, soldiers, lawyers, Anglo-Burmans, Indians, Europeans, young and old – clawing their way up rivers, over mountains and through Burmese jungles. Chapman, Firth and Reed drove to Shwebo where they spent the night in the open before continuing to Monywa.76 In Monywa they found a Mr Mitchell, Managing Director of the Rangoon Corporation, his wife, her companion and several senior officials occupying the Mission House. Boxes of confidential company documents were piled all around them. In his pocket, Mitchell carried an extremely valuable letter. It had been written by an army general and it instructed local military commanders to assist Mitchell’s party. It proved to be a life-saver. Firth and Reed agreed to accompany Mitchell and his party to the frontier. Chapman decided, bravely but controversially, to stay on in Monywa. On 16 April Firth, Reed and Mitchell’s party boarded the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company steamer Sind carrying hundreds of coolies to Kalewa.77 The passengers slept out on the open deck at night. At Kalewa, Mitchell waved the general’s letter at an army officer and it secured a lift in an open truck en route to the Indian border.78 Mrs Mitchell and her companion sat in the front and Firth and Reed perched with the other men in the back, on top of boxes of Rangoon Corporation records. The lorry kept breaking down on the deeply rutted road. At night they slept by the roadside as gaggles of people trudged by carrying irrelevant treasures, many of which were abandoned and strewn by the wayside further along the road. Reed made sure that everyone in the [ 118 ]

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party drank boiled water and Firth insisted that they used mosquito nets. Their diligence paid off, for no-one caught malaria or dysentery. On 22 April in Tamu they met Willans and Varney who were with a party of BOC managers on their way from Chauk.79 Mitchell’s letter was ‘open sesame’ to another lift, this time on an army mule train. The mules carried the baggage, document boxes, Mrs Mitchell and her companion, while the men walked alongside. At Lockchau they transferred onto open trucks and huddled together through torrential rainstorms. At Imphal they stayed in Mrs Shaw’s refugee camp before continuing to Dimapur and on to Calcutta by train.80 Willans’s journey had been equally eventful. On 3 April, at the same time as the bombs were raining down on Mandalay, he conducted a Good Friday service in the Union Church in Chauk. Dacoits had started fires and a pall of smoke hung over the town. The Japanese were advancing rapidly and planes circled overhead dropping propaganda leaflets. The ‘Full-D’ (demolition order) was issued on 13 April. Deafening explosions shook the air and the sky filled with flames and plumes of black smoke. It was 110° in the shade and one man died from heat stroke. Willans queued for hours with thousands of others. They boarded a vessel which steamed up the Chindwin. By the time the Japanese entered Chauk, they were thirty miles away at Yenangyat. Willans joined a party of BOC managers who set off in a convoy of ten cars. They believed that the Japanese were advancing on Kalemyo and Tamu. There was panic in the air. They reached the government rest-house in Tamu on 21 April at the same time as Firth, Reed and Mitchell’s party.81 Chapman could not bear to speak about his journey from Mawlaik for weeks afterwards. Eventually he wrote to Rattenbury, but parts of the journey are still shrouded in mystery.82 Chapman stayed behind in Monywa after Firth and Reed had left. He refused to leave until Rev. Pai Bwin had got away safely and Chuni Lal had gone through Monywa on his way to India. Miss Mackley was sceptical. The Burmese Methodists had told her that they would not leave until the last missionary had gone.83 For whatever reason, Chapman stayed on for a while in the Mission House with a group of doctors and nurses and then he moved on to Mawlaik.84 Acheson and Vincent were already there. They were astonished to see Chapman and warned him that the Japanese were nearby. They were about to leave and implored Chapman to do likewise. He explained that he had to ‘escort a party of over 200 Indian men, women and children in small boats’ up the Yu stream to India. Chapman’s journey would have been difficult and dangerous at the best of times, but it was near-suicidal in these circumstances.85 There were too few [ 119 ]

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vessels, so the baggage was carried in the boats and the evacuees walked alongside. The boatmen were mutinous and the coolies ran off into the jungle. There was no drinking water and Chapman had to walk ahead to Tamu to procure transport. When the party caught up with him, he set off again to Palel, thirty-eight miles away over rough mountain tracks. He tried to procure transport to take the party the remaining 150 miles to Dimapur.86 Chapman’s account stops here. The fate of the 200 Indian men, women and children is not known. Chapman ‘was the only European’ and ‘needed all his wit and skill in handling’ the Indians. His only companion was ‘his little spaniel Mickey’. Chapman arrived in Calcutta ‘having had little food for the past 48 hours’ and he was rushed straight to hospital.87 Vincent and Acheson arrived soon afterwards, exhausted, and with only the clothes they stood in. They had stayed behind in Mawlaik until the very last refugees went through. The Japanese were close behind and they raced through deserted camps and border posts. Planes flew overhead on their way to bomb Imphal. After marching non-stop, they scrambled onto the last lorry leaving for Dimapur.88 By June 1942, only Silcock had not yet arrived in India. He had been stationed in Lonpo in the Shan States and had wanted to serve as an army chaplain. Nothing more was heard of him until he turned up in Calcutta many weeks later.89 He had escaped through the northern Shan Hills, worked as a chaplain in the Burma Army and had subsequently joined the ‘Chindits’. He served in Burma for the rest of the war.90 Official estimates suggest that 331,000 people were evacuated to India between March and May 1942. Only 4,500 of them were reported to have died or were injured. Both sets of figures need to be taken with a pinch of salt. Almost half the evacuees followed the route through Tamu taken by Chapman, Firth, Reed and Vincent; 6,000 were airlifted out. Some went through the Taungup Pass, via Homalin or the Hukawg valley.91 Cholera was the main hazard and the serious outbreak at Myingyan refugee camp near Monywa closed the evacuation route.92 Mandalay was hardest hit by epidemics, and during April 1942 600 people died every day from cholera or smallpox.93 Methodist missionaries played distinguished roles in the evacuation, although fact and fiction sometimes became confused in the chaos.94 Did Firth drive a train to Shwebo, for example, and did Varney deliver nine babies on a refugee train to Monywa?95 Some things were absolutely certain. It helped to be European, to be healthy and to have cash. It was useful to have a letter of introduction from an army general, of course, but the missionaries also had to show abundant personal courage.96 [ 120 ]

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Chapman had been Chairman since 1930. He was sensitive and caring but constantly had to deal with conflict, death and destruction. He drove himself to the limits of endurance and took pride in the fact that none of his colleagues had died during these appalling times. The SPG missionary Rev. Turner was ‘badly mauled’ by Burmans in 1942, and Rev. Cecil Johnston of the Bible Churchman’s Missionary Society was killed by the Japanese.97 Chapman was determined to be the last missionary to leave Burma, but two questions remain unanswered. A lively debate had taken place at Synod in 1942. Some missionaries wanted to hide in isolated villages for the duration of the war, but the consensus was that ‘this would only postpone’ their eventual capture and put Burmese lives at risk. They decided unanimously to leave as soon as possible ‘for the sake of the loyal and devoted people’.98 It raises questions as to why Chapman found it so hard to obey the decision. The second question concerns his last heroic journey out of Burma. It will never be known whether the Indians he led arrived in India or whether they were abandoned to their fate. Chapman once said that ‘these are great days for verifying spiritual realities’.99 They were indeed. The missionaries were demoralised and exhausted as they assembled in Calcutta between March and May 1942. Some were ill, others were emotionally exhausted. All felt a mixture of relief, guilt, sadness, anger and anxiety at ‘the tragedy . . . of having to leave Burma’.100 They formed a fierce, edgy fellowship. They had no jobs, no possessions and no money. The National Bank of Burma had liquidated the Burma Mission account and they had received no mail from England since December 1941. There was no news from Burma, only vague rumours that Chinese soldiers had looted the civil lines in Mandalay, and that ‘a British return’ would be ‘contested’. The only reality was their shared trauma. Other people, other places and other pain seemed irrelevant.101 The Burma Synod met twice in India. It provided some semblance of structure but little more. Chapman, Firth, Miss Robertson, Varney, Reed and Vincent met in Benares in July 1942. Sewell, Holden, Leigh, the Misses Merrick, Bush and Cleaver were on leave, Hawtin was on military service and Silcock, Acheson the Misses Mackley and Hollinshed were elsewhere in India. Shepherd, Kinchin and Holmes had returned to England, Chuni Lal and Sohan Singh had arrived in India.102 There was still no news out of Burma and they felt numb and anxious. The second Synod was held in Bangalore in January 1943. If anything it was even more sombre. There was the customary head-count of absentees – those on furlough, those in other Indian Districts and those on active service. The Sewells had survived ‘an accident’ (code [ 121 ]

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for a shipping disaster) and were in South Africa.103 The Holdens had arrived in Australia, the Kinchins were in England and there was still no news from Burma.104 Everyone had lost something irreplaceable.105 Willans had lost his precious and unique collection of books and handcoloured slides, for example.106 Synod discussed a request from Acheson to join the Intelligence Department on their special operations in Burma. Chapman refused to give permission.107 The Missionary Committee in London was surprised by Chapman’s refusal but was unwilling to overrule the decision. Synod considered it to be an important matter of principle. They agreed with Chapman that it would be ‘unwise and most prejudicial to our standing as missionaries to undertake intelligence service’. It might affect ‘the treatment of all missionaries in Japanese hands’. In justification of their views, the missionaries pointed to Tuahranga, a Chin minister, who was helping the Secret Service ‘in addition to his mission work’, and to the news that a ‘Christian leader of the Karens’ had been shot by the Japanese.108 There were few ‘diversions’. Robert Acheson was born in July 1942 and Jennifer Vincent in February 1943. Sadly, Jennifer died from dysentery eleven months later. Temperatures reached 120° in the shade in September 1942 and a thief broke Chapman’s jaw while stealing his bicycle in July 1943.109 Gandhi’s arrest in July 1943 provoked schoolboys to pull communication cords on trains and to scrawl ‘Quit India’ on walls.110 The Burma missionaries in India formed a close-knit ‘club’ which provided mutual emotional support. Those who had not shared the vivid experiences of evacuation and exile inevitably became outsiders. The competent and reliable Holden was quickly brought back into the fold. He was in Australia during 1942, and briefly became headmaster of a Methodist High School in Ceylon before coming to India. He joined the Burma Civil Affairs Service (CAS(B) – which repaired buildings and distributed food) and was the first missionary to reach Mandalay. He sent newsy letters back to the others in India, a service that led to his speedy rehabilitation. Shepherd was the best Chairman Burma never had. He was twice acting Chairman, wise, equable and respected, but he was an outsider. Shepherd was on furlough in England in 1942, so missed the invasion and evacuation. He was Chapman’s designated successor and was desperate to rejoin his colleagues in India.111 He was unable to get to Calcutta until February 1944 but quickly won people over. Disaster struck him in March 1945 when he was diagnosed with leprosy and felt ‘shot down’.112 After great suffering, protracted treatment, periods of isolation and eventual recovery, Shepherd was invalided back to [ 122 ]

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England. Firth returned as acting Chairman with the great advantage of having struggled out of Burma with the others. Leigh was more complex. Affable and moderate, his humour had brightened many tedious Synod meetings.113 Some doubted his evangelical fervour but his strong-willed wife made up for any lack of spiritual muscle.114 Rattenbury was sure that Chapman would ‘move heaven and earth’ to have Leigh back, but Chapman was not so sure. Leigh had annoyed him in July 1941 by taking his family to South Africa on furlough.115 It was an expensive option, costing much more than going to a hill station in India.116 Leigh was not a good correspondent so he failed to allay suspicions that he intended to stay in South Africa. In February 1942 he explained that he had concerns about his daughter’s health, but it cut no ice. Chapman was ‘very disappointed indeed’, for everyone worried about their children.117 Vincent whispered in Rattenbury’s ear that although Leigh was ‘a good fellow . . . no one is over keen on his return’.118 In April 1943 Leigh surprised his colleagues by showing up in India en route to Burma as a chaplain in the X1V Army.119 He was ‘full of beans’, and ‘tickled at the idea of being sent where some of us have been trying hard to reach’.120 Leigh served with distinction throughout the Imphal campaign, was wounded, contracted amoebic hepatitis and never fully recovered.121 Rattenbury was embarrassed and Chapman insisted that he had been misunderstood – he had wanted Leigh back in Burma all the time.122 Truth is the first casualty of war and a consensus that had held firm since 1887 broke under the strain of the evacuation.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Burma District Report, 1939, and Correspondence/ FBN4/Shepherd–Hickman Johnson, 11 January 1940. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Rattenbury–Chapman, 21 November 1941. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6A/Firth Papers: Burma District Report, 1940. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6A/Firth Papers: Burma District Report, 1941. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Noble–Shepherd, 26 January and 16 February 1940. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Rattenbury–Shepherd, 8 October, 16 October, 1 November and 6 December 1940. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Rattenbury–Chapman, 23 December 1941, 7 and 28 January and 6 February 1942. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP3/2/Dorothy Mackley Papers: Recollections, 1939–45. The Burma Road to China was closed in July 1941 because the Japanese suspected that war materials from Burma were being sent to China. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Rattenbury–Chapman, 17 February and 6 March 1942. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6A/Firth Papers: Burma District Report, 1940. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 14 December 1941 and 2 July 1942. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6A/Firth Papers: Burma District Report, 1940,

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13 14 15 16

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17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

and SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Rattenbury–Chapman, 30 December 1941. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6A/Firth Papers: Burma District Report, 1940. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 22 March 1942. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6C/Firth Papers: Notes by Willans, June 1942. Willans lived above the B&FBS headquarters in the centre of Rangoon. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Rattenbury–Chapman, 23 December 1941 and 7 January 1942. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Synod General Letter, 14 January 1942. SOAS/MMS/MRP/6D/26, Letter from Firth, June 1942. Janet Roberts, The Long Way Home: An Account of Florence Cleaver’s Journey out of Burma in 1942, Matlock, Aubrex, 1993, p. 20. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Synod General Letter, 14 January 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Missionaries, 30 January 1942. The evacuation plans included journeying through the Upper Chindwin by elephant, cart and ferries. SOAS/MMS/Unclassified/MRP/2/3(e)/Mackley Papers: Recollections, 1939–45. However, not all the Baptist missionaries left. For example, Rev. Crane, Head of the ABM Press in Rangoon, was responsible for the Supply Section of the Evacuation Department. Colonel Vorley thought highly of him (see J.S. Vorley and H.M. Vorley, The Road from Mandalay, Windsor, Wilton 65, 2002, p. 49). SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 15 January 1942. Roberts, The Long Way Home, p. 20; Hilda Porter was the Women’s Work Secretary in London. Louis Allen, Burma: The Longest War 1941–45, London, Phoenix Press, 1984, p. 44. Claude Delachet Guillon, Daw Sein: les dix mille vies d’une femme Birmane, Paris, Editions du Senil, 1978, pp. 152–155. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 12 March 1942. Rangoon had surrendered on 8 March. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/2/Mackley Papers: Recollections, 1939–45. Miss Mackley drove into Mandalay and found the Schools Inspector ‘busily loading his wife, family and household possessions into a fleet of bullock carts’, to evacuate into the jungle. But he agreed to examine her students. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/2/Mackley Papers: Recollections, 1939–45. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6C/Willans Papers: Recollections, June 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 20 February 1942, ‘the country is bankrupt, no revenues are being collected, and vast sums of private money are being transferred to India’. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 22 March 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Circular Letter to all the Missionaries, 30 January 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 18 February 1942. He was told by the Mandalay District Commissioner that Acheson came to Burma from the Irish Conference in 1937. He settled in the USA. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Circular Letter to all Missionaries, 18 February 1942. Dr Jamaldin was a pillar of Mandalay Methodism as his children and grandchildren are today. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 12 March 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Circular Letter to all Missionaries, 18 February 1942. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/2/Mackley Papers: Recollections, 1939–45. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Circular Letter to Missionaries, 18 February 1942. Stanley Vincent, BA b. Devonport 1905; educated Haberdashers and Handsworth College; Bank of England; went to Mawlaik in 1930; married Violet Batchelor in double-wedding with Dorothy and Denis Reed 1933; Burma 1945–47;

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45 46 47 48 49

50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57

58 59 60 61 62

Falmouth and Penzance; returned to Burma 1954–56; British and Foreign Bible Society 196–65; Hong Kong 1956–69; d. 1998 aged ninety-three. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 20 February 1942. Mrs Sewell’s son was born on 12 February 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 1 March 1942. Acheson was procuring food supplies for evacuees. Stanley Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation: The Story of Methodism in Burma during 1942–5, London, Cargate Press, 1946, p. 10. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/ Chapman–Rattenbury, 20 February, 1 and 12 March 1942, and Rattenbury–Chapman, 18 March 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 14 July 1941. Chapman was at pains to point out that the fare to Cape Town was Rs 2,244, whereas to a hill station in India it was Rs 300. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Rattenbury–Chapman, 17 April 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 1 March 1942. The air raid was on Thursday 19 February. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6D/23(d)/Diary of Rev. G.E. Firth. Firth recollects that this was on about 23 February 1942. No mention is made of Kennedy in Calling to Mind, H.E.W. Braund’s history of Steel Brothers (Oxford, Pergamon, 1975), but Kennedy is mentioned in various private papers. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6D/26/Firth Papers: Letter from Firth, June 1942. The evacuation had profound political repercussions. It caused abrasions within the civil administration and rifts between the civil and military authorities. Useful analyses of the episode are provided by Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia 1941–1945, London, Allen Lane, 2004, pp. 156–207, Vorley and Vorley, The Road from Mandalay (Colonel Vorley was in charge of the civilian evacuation), and Hugh Tinker, ‘A Forgotten Long March: The Indian Exodus from Burma’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 6:1 (1975), 1–15. The India Office Collection of the British Library contains many unpublished reports and private papers, including Gerald Bourne, ‘Exit from Burma: A Wartime Journey from Rangoon to Simla’, BL/Eur/C341, and Janet Humble, ‘Out of Burma and Back Again, 1942–46’. The Dorman-Smith Papers (BL/Eur/E215) provide valuable insights. Several personal accounts have been published, such as that by S. Farrant Russell, Muddy Exodus: A Story of the Evacuation of Burma, London, Epworth, 1943. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6D/26/Firth Papers: Letter from Firth, June 1942. It was estimated that 6,000 people were airlifted out. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/2/3(e)/Mackley Papers: Recollections, 1939–45. Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation, pp. 13–14. Hawtin was injured in Prome and flown out by the army. Later he joined the RAF as an educational officer. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/2/3(e)/Mackley Papers: Recollections, 1939–45. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6D/23(d)/Firth Papers: Diary, 1942. Miss Robertson and Miss Merrick left Mandalay only after Chapman insisted they went. See Roberts, The Long Way Home, which is based on Florence Cleaver’s recollections. Miss Cleaver wrongly calls her host ‘Mr Stevens’, whereas elsewhere she records his name as Mr Naylor. The following timetable of events might explain the sense of urgency. On 14 April, the Governor-General had an emergency meeting with military commanders in Maymyo, the Japanese took Mandalay on 28 April and Kalewa on 30 April, and 20,000 refugees arrived in Myitkyina on 2 May. See David Reed, The Trek from Mandalay, London, Minerva, 1996. This children’s book is based on the author’s recollections as a six-year-old boy. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 12 March 1942. Londwins were dug-out canoes with built-up sides and matting shelters which were poled through shallow water. The passengers slept on the riverbank each night. Doolies were hammocks slung between poles and carried by coolies. Mrs Shaw was the wife of a tea planter, she was blonde and statuesque.

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64 65 66

67 68 69 70

71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

Vincent returned to Mawlaik to help the evacuation. Bernard Sewell, MA, BSc b. Deal 1906; educated Dover Grammar School and Westminster College; qualified teacher; Principal, Wesley High School Mandalay; trained at Wesley House, Cambridge in 1933; returned Burma 1936; married Joyce Morton-George 1942; their ship was torpedoed off South Africa; returned to England in 1946; d. 1981. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Rattenbury–Chapman, 18 March 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 22 March 1942. Denis Reed b. Petersfield 1904; qualified teacher; trained Richmond College; Burma in 1930; married Dorothy in 1933; taught at Mandalay Theological Institution; after 1945 he was a significant leader of the Church; Chairman of the District in 1952; returned to England in 1965; ‘Small of stature, keen of mind’; d. 1983. It was at the height of the hot season and everything was particularly dry. Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation, p. 11. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 12 June 1942. BL/IOR/M/41/3/955–B270/4: Letter from M. Dabey, 21 March 1943. The couple (Mr and Mrs Dabey) had escaped from Lower Burma. Chapman let them stay in an empty house in the Wesley compound. After the service on Good Friday they sat on the verandah, reading the paper. Without warning planes flew over and dropped bombs nearby. They ran to a trench in the garden as ‘another flight came over and more bombs’. Nearby buildings were ablaze and the wind was blowing in their direction so they grabbed their things and ran. SOAS/MMS/ Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 12 June 1942, and Uncatalogued/MRP/6D/23(d)/Firth Papers: Diary, 1942. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6A/Firth Papers: ‘Japanese bombings of Mandalay’ (newspaper) SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 12 June 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 12 June 1942: Chapman’s account differs from Firth’s. He said the servants, ‘one by one, pleaded to be allowed to go and we felt it to be unfair to try to keep them’. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6D/23(d)/Firth Papers: Diary, 1942. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6D/23(d)/Firth Papers: Diary, 1942. It was fortunate that Firth and his colleagues left when they did because the Ava Bridge was demolished a few days later by retreating British troops. The Sind had to return to Monywa to collect more coolies, who were working on the Kabaw Valley Road to India for retreating British troops. The road was barely passable for 106 miles and was incomplete at the far end. Firth says Varney joined the BOC party in Pakokku. This contradicts Vincent (Out of Great Tribulation, pp. 10–11) that Varney hijacked a bus in Pakokku and drove a party of Anglo-Indians via the Kabaw valley to Tamu. He assisted at the Palel transit camp before arriving at Dimapur and just before Imphal was bombed. Reginald Varney b. Whitefield, Gloucestershire 1898; educated Cliff College and Didsbury College; Southern Shan States in 1927; Chaplain in India in 1942; returned to Burma in 1945; returned to England in 1953; d. 1966. SOAS/MMS/MRP/Uncatalogued/6D/23(d)/Firth Papers: Diary, 1942. The Japanese bombed the refugee camp, killing some helpers. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6C/Willans Papers: June 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 12 June 1942. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/2/3(e)/Mackley Papers: Recollections, 1939–45. The Mission House became a large military hospital. It is not clear who had asked Chapman to lead the party of Indians or why he had been selected to do it. Firth and Reed had covered this part of the journey by army mule train. Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation, pp. 12–13. Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation, p. 13. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 22 March, 26 May and 12 June 1942.

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93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101

102 103 104 105 106 107 108

109 110 111

112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122

Valentine Silcock b. Belfast 1910; youth leader; Edgehill 1933; Lonpo, Shan Hills 1937; chaplain with the Chindits 1942–45; Shan Hills 1945–52; returned to Northern Ireland; Secretary and Treasurer of MMS in Ireland; d. 1999. BL/M/3/955: Report on the Evacuation from Burma. In April 1942 4,000 people were caught in the most serious outbreak of cholera at the Myingyan camp. An estimated 70,000 refugees were in Mandalay on 21 April 1942. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6D/26/Firth Papers: Letter from Firth, June 1942. Roberts, The Long Way Home, p. 45. The missionaries faced many perils. For example, Miss Bush had forgotten to have her vaccinations, so she was vulnerable to cholera until she reached the next port. SOAS/WMMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 12 June 1942. SOAS/MMS/Unclassified/MRP/2/3(e)/Mackley Papers: Recollections, 1939–45. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 12 March 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 12 June 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 3 and 12 June 1942. Firth reported that thousands of bags of mail had been destroyed in Rangoon, that ‘express’ cables never arrived and that no information had got through to wives in India until hours before they arrived in Calcutta. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Burma District Missionaries, 29–30 July 1942. Other members of the Indian congregation had also arrived via the Tamu Road route. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 18 October 1942. See Burma during the Japanese Occupation, Government of Burma Intelligence Bureau Report, Simla, 1943; it contained few facts and only pre-1942 data. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4: Minutes of Burma Synod, Bangalore, January 1943. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6D/Firth Papers: Letter, July 1943. Willans had stored his belongings in a BOC warehouse in Chauk, but everything was destroyed and he arrived without a single book. He recovered a few slides later. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 31 August 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 24 October 1942. The Intelligence Bureau of the Government of Burma, Simla, 1943 reported that BIA had shot Hon. Saw Pe Tha (former Minister for Judicial Affairs, and leader of the Karens), his English wife and their daughter. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 20 and 26 July, 11 September 1942, 10 March 1943, 7 January 1944. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6D/Firth Papers: Letter from Willans, July 1943. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Rattenbury–Chapman, 14 August and October 1942, ‘When the time comes for you to relinquish your position, your successor will be Shepherd’, and 10 August 1942 (cable), Chapman–Rattenbury, ‘Meeting unanimous, Shepherd not come at present’. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Shepherd–Rattenbury, 18 February 1943 and 24 March 1945. John Lowes Leigh b. Darlington 1904; educated Barnard Castle School; trained Didsbury College 1925; Burma 1927; Johannesburg 1941–43; Chaplain in X1V Army and wounded in Imphal campaign 1942–45; d. 1 August 1957. Jennie Dawson went as a WW missionary in 1927. She and Leigh met and married in Burma. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Rattenbury–Chapman, 14 September 1943. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 14 July 1941. A single fare to Cape Town was Rs 2,244; to Darjeeling it was Rs 300. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 5 February 1942. Margaret Leigh had been diagnosed with rheumatic fever. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Rattenbury–Shepherd, 12 May 1944. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Rattenbury–Chapman, 30 April 1943. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 8 May 1943. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Shepherd–Rattenbury, 20 July 1944. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 14 May 1945.

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Japanese occupation

A bamboo curtain descended on Upper Burma in May 1942. Little news filtered in or out. The warp and weft of everyday civilian life during the Japanese occupation is something of a mystery. In 1945 Rev. Stanley Vincent compiled an important booklet, Out of Great Tribulation, containing the wartime recollections of Burmese Methodists.1 Two army chaplains (Acheson and Brown-Moffett) wrote brief accounts of separate visits they had made to the Chin States during 1944. In August 1945 Rev. U Po Tun wrote a long letter to Chapman in which he described life in Mandalay. Otherwise, glimpses of this important period are fragmentary and flimsy.2 In some respects arbitrary Japanese rule merely replaced arbitrary British colonial rule, but there was another important factor too. Battles of conquest and reconquest raged across Burma, rendering normal civilian life impossible. The Japanese occupation was probably less uniformly brutish than Western mythologies sometimes suggest. Many Burmans hoped the Japanese would bring independence and most feared anarchy more than they feared Japanese rule. In June 1942 the situation was grim. U Sein Tin, an Oxford-educated Indian Civil Service (ICS) officer, discovered to his cost that criminals in Upper Burma were active and that ‘cheats and crooks proliferate’.3 Acheson encountered a Lushai Bible Woman called Vomathisngi who had lost an eye when a gang of Burmese thugs beat her up. Only the prompt intervention of a Japanese officer had saved her life. Not surprisingly, people yearned for security and many Burmans turned to the Japanese for protection. The occupation was complex, contradictory and volatile. There were unexpected oddities – for example, it was rumoured that the Japanese general in Myitkyina was a good Methodist!4 More usually Japanese soldiers were inconsistent and unpredictable. Everyone had to cope with their ‘arrogance and brutality’.5 Won Zoon Yoon explains that the [ 128 ]

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military command in Tokyo was unable to ‘control the forces in the field’ so gekokujo, or ‘rule from below’, prevailed.6 U Ba Than expostulated that ‘the Japanese knew no law’.7 The Japanese War Institute boasted high-mindedly of the Imperial Army’s ‘ethical principles’ and its desire to help people find their ‘proper place’. In practice, junior officers in the field were laws unto themselves. Some were brutal, others compassionate.8 Between April 1942 and December 1944 few people believed the British would return to Burma. It was unsurprising therefore that Burmese Methodists were ambivalent about the future. Because it was impossible for civilians to travel freely around Burma, Methodism fragmented into separate and isolated communities. Responsibility rested on the shoulders of unknown and hitherto untried local church leaders. They suddenly came of age – men and women like Rev. Denkunga in Tamu, Rev. Tuahranga in Tahan, Rev. U San Nwe and Saya U Ba Maung in Kyaukse, Rev. U Po Tun in Mandalay, Saya Hla Pe and U Po Wine in Mawlaik, U Chit in Pakokku, U Hla Pe in Chauk, Daw Chit May in Lezin and U Ba Htun in Kalaw. They had no precedents to follow, so had to extemporise, bend, ignore and break the rules. Initially civilians were more afraid of Allied air raids than they were of Japanese soldiers. Local Allied ground commanders seemed able to deploy aircraft at will. The raids were frequent, heavy and apparently indiscriminate. Isolated villages were often targeted for no apparent reason and thousands of people were made homeless. Louis Allen described an Allied raid on the village of Mogaung in which planes inexplicably bombed a ‘fatigue party unloading mules causing horrible carnage’.9 At first the Chin States bore the brunt of the Allied bombing. Lushai Methodists in Nakala near Tamu escaped just before the town was obliterated.10 Rev. Denkunga lost all his possessions, including a box containing 200 Burmese Gospels. Methodists in Mawlaik fled to Laungkaung on the other side of the River Chindwin when they were bombed out, and Methodists in Kalemyo trekked to Tahan.11 Rev. W. Brown-Moffett saw for himself that people were terrified. In December 1944 his army unit passed through Kalemyo where not a house was standing. The air raids spread steadily southwards during 1944.12 Burmese Methodists had particular reason to fear the Burma Independence Army (BIA) which openly defied orders from the Japanese military administration.13 BIA soldiers regarded Burmese Christians as traitors, almost as a separate ethnic group. Burmese Methodists suffered terribly at their hands.14 Shortly after the missionaries left the Somra Tract in 1942, a Japanese officer intervened to stop a BIA unit from executing a group of Methodists. In the Chin Hills a Methodist called [ 129 ]

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U Mya Bu was so terrified of BIA soldiers that he cobbled together a raft and floated with his family 200 miles downriver to his home in Loi-an. On the way his eldest son died of fever and his two younger sons were tortured and decapitated by Japanese soldiers.15 Pongyis generally kept a low profile during the occupation, but ordinary Buddhist Burmans were unhelpful and sometimes hostile. They risked reprisals if they befriended Christians and many of them remembered colonial rule with little affection. They resented the way in which Christians had enjoyed British patronage in pre-war days. It was not uncommon in the streets to hear Japanese, BIA troops and indeed ordinary Burmans yelling the abusive nickname China after the Methodists. Name-calling might have been trivial but it was intimidating and demoralising. The Methodists sometimes felt that the only people they could trust were other Methodists. In March 1942, shortly before Japanese soldiers arrived, most of the Mandalay Methodist congregation took refuge in villages east of the city. Initially, the locals treated them with suspicion – regarding them almost as non-Burmans. They kept the Methodists at arm’s length. It was understandable for no-one knew exactly how the Japanese might behave and any complication was unwelcome. Relationships improved over time but the Methodists never felt at ease in village life and gradually they returned to Mandalay. Rev. U Po Tun had not left Mandalay with the others. When the Japanese arrived in April 1942 he visited the new military commander and introduced himself as the minister in charge of Methodist Mission properties. It was a mistake. The Japanese slapped his face, beat him up and kept him under surveillance. He had to move house seven times during the next few months, but eventually settled in the leafy suburb of Mahazayabon. It was a prosperous enclave noted for its urbane residents and relaxed tolerance. One by one other Methodists trickled back into Mandalay, always making a beeline for Mahazayabon. It became the Methodists’ unofficial wartime headquarters, just as U Po Tun was their unofficial leader.16 Wesley Church Mandalay had been gutted during the bombing raids of April 1942 and the Japanese requisitioned the Mission House and the Girls High School soon afterwards. The Methodists reopened a small school in Mahazayabon and they held weekly services in Saya Klaipo’s house.17 The regular Burmese congregation was augmented from time to time by an eclectic mixture of Buddhists, ‘Burmese princes’ and Japanese soldiers. The services in Mahazayabon were held throughout the occupation and continued as British soldiers advanced through Mandalay in 1945. They often augmented the weekly congregation. [ 130 ]

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In addition, U Po Tun rather cheekily held thanksgiving services in Maymyo, one for the German surrender and another for ‘victory to Japan in anticipation’.18 It had been far from plain sailing during the occupation. U Po Tun had a very tough time. He had dodged Japanese bullets and British bombs, and had to cope with hyperinflation. The price of a bag of rice went up to Rs 1,000 and a tin of oil cost Rs 2,000. He had to barter all his personal possessions for food and he ended a letter to Chapman in August 1945 with the pathetic words, ‘it is a great wonder how I live on’. U Po Tun was especially coy about one particular episode.19 He had befriended a young woman called Ma Sein Ngwe who later moved in with him. Unfortunately, the ‘Japanese manager of the STK Company’ also took a shine to her and in November 1943 a serious altercation occurred between the two men. U Po Tun was shot and wounded. His injuries were insignificant compared with the mental agonies he endured as he anticipated the missionaries’ admonitions. Curiously Chapman mentioned neither U Po Tun’s duel nor Ma Sein Ngwe.20 Mahazayabon may have been leafy but it was not always safe, as Saya U Bin Yin discovered in January 1943. He and his family were arrested as British spies, bundled into trucks and taken to Mandalay Fort. Some of them were thrown into cells and others were tied to poles outside. They were questioned and tortured for three days while U Bin Yin’s children were urged to betray him. Suddenly and inexplicably they were all released. Despite such incidents, Methodists from all over Upper Burma gravitated to Mahazayabon whenever they were in danger.21 The day after Rev. R. Varney left Pakokku with the other British residents on 20 April 1942 the town was set on fire.22 Lusoes (armed robbers) swarmed everywhere and there was widespread violence. A teacher at the Methodist school was among those killed. Houses were ransacked and anything of value was looted.23 A group of Methodists fled into the jungle with U Chit, Principal of Wesley High School Pakokku. After living ‘rough’ for several months they returned to the town, only to be driven out again by RAF bombing. The church and the school were destroyed.24 Japanese and BIA soldiers occupied the mission buildings. The local Kempeitai (Japanese military police) suspected the Methodists of being British spies and regularly dragged them into police headquarters for interrogation and beatings. Buddhists were amazed that they remained loyal to the Church, and even more surprised that Saya U Chit longed for ‘the speedy return of the legal government and our sayagyis’.25 Saya U Hla Pe was the evangelist in Chauk.26 In April 1942 he took his family to Yesagyo, fifty miles from Pakokku, where fifty Burmese [ 131 ]

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and Chinese Christians (Baptist and Methodist refugees from Lower Burma) were living. A month later the BIA marched in and seized the church, declaring it to be ‘enemy property’. The Burmese tricolour was hoisted over the buildings, and U Hla Pe was told to get out. In future he could hold services only in his own house. The Kempeitai frequently questioned him about his ‘nationality, religion, education and occupation’. He had to use all his ‘wit and skill’ to protect the Christians ‘from the tortures of the Japanese’. When an Allied air raid destroyed 200 houses in Yesagyo in 1943, U Hla Pe moved to the village of Paygon, but he returned every Sunday to take services in Yesagyo. Local Buddhists marvelled at the risks U Hla Pe was prepared to take even though ‘the English had gone’. He explained that Christianity had ‘nothing to do with nationality’. He was much less able to answer the questions posed by pongyis about why Christians fought wars with Christians. The Kempeitai watched his every movement and in May 1944 BIA soldiers marched around the village throwing stones at Christians and shouting ‘kill the English’. U Hla Pe returned to Chauk in April 1945 after British soldiers had retaken the town. He came across a group of Burmese and Karen Christians who had courageously met under the pseudonym of ‘YMCA’ throughout the occupation. He learned that the Japanese had tortured and killed his old friend, Maung Ba Pyon.27 When Japanese and BIA forces entered Monywa in May 1942, Daw Chit May and forty other Methodists escaped to the village of Lezin. Rev. Pai Bwin returned to his home in Hmangyo and Daw Ngwe Wint, the Bible Woman, opened a school in another village.28 The Monywa Methodist Church was used as a Japanese telephone exchange and Wesley High School became a military hospital. At the end of 1942 the Kempeitai arrested all the Methodists in Lezin on a trumped-up charge of receiving articles from the RAF.29 They were released on condition that they stopped singing hymns and inviting non-Christians to their services. After constant threats from Japanese police and local Buddhists, Daw Chit May returned to Monywa in 1945.30 During fierce fighting around Kyaukse in 1942, Rev. U San Nwe packed everything onto a bullock cart and took his family to his home village of Letpanbin. When fighting broke out there too, they went to Puttaing. The village elders demanded money and told U San Nwe that if he wanted to stay he must renounce Christianity. When he refused, the villagers threatened him with dahs, ransacked his hut, burned his Bibles and paraded around the village in his preaching robes chanting ‘China’.31 He was treated no better at the villages of Panan and Ywapale. In desperation U San Nwe returned to Kyaukse only to discover that the BIA had taken over the church. They had chopped up the pews and pulpit for firewood and an anti-Christian thugyi had stuck [ 132 ]

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a sign on U San Nwe’s house saying ‘enemy property’. It was the last straw. Rev. U San Nwe took his family to Mahazayabon where they stayed until the end of the war.32 The headmaster of the Kyaukse slojd institute, Saya U Ba Maung, took his family to a remote jungle village. However, his elderly father was beaten and his mother and sister died in suspicious circumstances. Finally an RAF bombing raid drove Saya U Ba Maung and his family to seek refuge in Mahazayabon where he worked as a trader for the rest of the war.33 In Kalaw the Japanese requisitioned the church and turned it into stables for their horses. The preacher, U Ba Htun, was abused and called ‘China’. In 1942 he moved to Pinney Ridge where once again he was tortured by the local Kempeitai. U Ba Htun went back to Kalaw where he was accorded cult status after setting up a Christian First Aid Group. Its heroic exploits during British air raids on Kalaw in March 1945 were legendary.34 Throughout this time Burmese Methodists had no way of knowing whether or not the missionaries would return. Often their allegiance to Christianity was stretched to the limits and was inimical to personal safety. It made their heroism all the greater. A few Christians reverted to Buddhism, but most did not, although they must have wondered whether Christianity was worth the risk. Mandalay became increasingly dangerous in March 1945 as Japanese troops fought a fierce rearguard action. During the Allies’ advance, a Japanese anti-aircraft gun was placed in the compound of Saya Chit Po who had been a teacher at Wesley High School. On 10 March there was a British bombing raid and fierce street-fighting. Japanese soldiers shot Saya Chit Po, mistaking him for a Gurkha soldier. U Hla Gyaw and other terrified Methodists ran off into the jungle. By the time they returned on 19 March the Japanese had retreated but lusoes had looted their houses and set fire to the mission buildings. It was the last act of the war in Mandalay and soon afterwards Australian soldiers marched into Mahazayabon.35 By August 1945 it had become clear that the missionaries would return to Upper Burma. The prospect was not viewed with unmitigated joy. It would mean that Burmese church leaders, who had exercised responsibility in extraordinarily difficult circumstances, would be demoted to their former ‘subaltern’ status. Some of them had been excited by leadership. They took proprietorial pride in the Church’s survival without the missionaries. On the other hand, the Missionary Society paid their salaries so they had to give way gracefully. Nevertheless, U San Nwe feared he would be blamed for the state [ 133 ]

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of the church in Kyaukse, and U Po Tun that he would be accused of immorality.36 Anxiety gave way to irritation when they realised that their heroism and faithfulness had been taken for granted. Wounds opened up during the war that would fester for years to come.

Notes

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1 2 3

4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12

13

14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21

Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation. In 2007 the author interviewed several survivors of the occupation. Theippan Maung Wa (U Sein Tin), Wartime in Burma: A Diary, January to June 1942, ed. and trans. by L.E. Bagshawe and Anna J. Allott, Athens, Ohio University Research in International Studies, 2009, pp. 183, 203–205. In April 1942 U Sein Tin found Rev. Tanner who had been robbed and badly injured. U Sein Tin himself was killed in June 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 8 May and 13 September 1943 and 30 January 1944; and Shepherd–Rattenbury, 20 June 1944. See Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation. Ba Maw, Breakthrough in Burma, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1972, p. 276. Won Zoon Yoon, ‘Japan’s Occupation of Burma, 1941–1945’, unpublished PhD Thesis, New York University, 1971. Gekokujo was devised by young officers in the 1930s. See Yoon, ‘Japan’s Occupation’, p. 194. Nicholas Tarling, A Sudden Rampage: The Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia 1941–1945, London, Hurst, 2001, p. 132; speech of Tojo to the House of Peers on 20 January 1942. Allen, Burma: The Longest War, p. 370. Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation, pp. 42–43. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Rattenbury–Chapman 17 December 1943; and Shepherd–Rattenbury 14 June 1944. A letter to Acheson, written on 28 May 1943, was received on 5 April 1944. Acheson did not reply in case it fell into Japanese hands. U Po Wine was leader of the Kalemyo Methodists. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/W. Brown-Moffett (BCMS), 19 December 1944; Chemi, a Lushai girl, translated for him. She was educated at Mandalay Girls High School, had trained as a nurse in Moulmein and became prominent in the post-war Church. Dorothy Hess Guyot, ‘The Political Impact of the Japanese Occupation of Burma’, unpublished PhD Thesis, Yale University, 1966, pp. 129–164, describes the uneasy relations between the Japanese and BIA. See also Yoon, ‘Japan’s Occupation’, p. 175; Akiho Ishii (Senior Staff Officer of the SAA) acted without the approval of the Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6D/24/Firth Papers: conversation between Firth and Paul Ellingworth, Methodist Recorder, 27 April 1971. Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation, pp. 44–46. See SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6D/23(e)/Rev. U Po Tun–Chapman, 20 August 1945, and Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation, p. 18. The school went up to Standard 7. The teachers were Ma Thein Tin, Ma Mya, Ma Mi, Ma Aye Kyi and Ma Aye Yin. Saya Klaipo was a Karen Baptist teacher at Wesley Boys High School before the war, as was his neighbour, Saya Chit Po. Agnes Klaipo (Klaipo’s daughter) still lived in Mahazayabon in 2007 at the age of seventy five. The services were held in Maymyo at the invitation of Captain Saw Tun Shwe and Daw Hnin Ye. U Po Tun made the excuse that he had promised a Miss Parrish that he would look after Ma Sein Ngwe. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/6D/23(e)/U Po Tun–Chapman, 20 August 1945. Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation, p. 18.

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26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Varney either hijacked a bus or got a lift with BOC staff. Saya U Thet Pyin was a teacher at the school in the village of Kanhla. The bombing raids were in October 1943. Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation, p 27; ‘sayagyi’ was the term used for missionaries. Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation, pp. 28–34. They accused him of signalling to British planes during an air raid. Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation, pp. 34–38. A Christian Japanese army doctor protected them. Rev. J. Heaven, a Methodist chaplain, visited Lezin in 1945. He was so impressed by Daw Chit May that he wrote about her in the Methodist Recorder. She also featured in H.E. Bates’s novel The Purple Plain. This abusive tag used by the Japanese soldiers was a corruption of ‘Christian’. It also implied ‘foreigner’. Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation, pp. 47–51. Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation, pp. 51–52. Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation, pp. 53–56; 182 people were killed in the raids. Vincent, Out of Great Tribulation, pp. 23–24. Holden reported that U Po Tun had married the widow of ‘one of our Christian members’.

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National traumas

A new era dawned in 1945. Letters exchanged between missionaries in Mandalay and Secretaries in London became more circumspect and less frequent. Unrecorded telephone conversations replaced the gossipy handwritten notes of colonial times. Although spontaneity made a brief comeback during the 1960s, the tone of missionary discourse changed forever. For the first time too, authentic Burmese voices can be heard speaking from dusty records in the Myanmar National Archives.1 The war had exploded myths of imperial invincibility. It triggered nationalist turmoil in India and exposed colonial vulnerability in Burma.2 Burma was victim of a conflict that was not of its own making: 300,000 evacuees had hacked through the country in 1942; Japanese and Allied bombers had wrecked the infrastructure, and foreign armies had trampled back and forth across paddy fields leaving destroyed homes and numberless civilian casualties in their wake. To cap it all Burmans had experienced the cheek-by-jowl indignities of wartime occupation. When the war ended, coruscating events in Rangoon eclipsed the struggles of ordinary people. The Methodist Synod in Mandalay predicted a gloomy and uncertain future.3 The sheer scale of destruction gnawed away at post-war Burmese politics and undermined public morale. In April 1945 Holden was airlifted into Upper Burma by the Civil Affairs Service Unit (CAS(B)) and he saw for himself the ‘desolation and ruin’ in Mandalay. Harrowing stories were on everyone’s lips. Firth landed in Rangoon in November 1945. A pall of shock and excitement hung over the city. Everywhere there were bomb-scarred shops, bazaars, houses, stations and offices. Familiar landmarks – Rowe’s Immanuel Church, the Scots Kirk and the United Methodist School – had disappeared completely. The iconic Bible Society building was battered and full of squatters. Inflation was rampant and rice cost Rs 400 a bag. Housewives, street traders, [ 136 ]

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urchins, trishaw drivers, soldiers, colonial officials, businessmen and missionaries jostled uneasily in potholed streets.4 Firth scurried around picking up gossip in teashops and clubs. He met old colleagues. Acheson was now an army chaplain and Rev. Olmstead was sniffing out Christian ‘persecution stories’. At the Anglican Cathedral he discussed church politics with Bishop George West. He preached to great congregations of troops and swapped fragments of information about missing friends. Several Methodists from Upper Burma were living in Rangoon. Maung Sein Tun was in the army, U Ba was Principal of the Emergency University, Ma Khin U had been caught in a bomb-blast near Sule Pagoda, U Tun Pe (the pompous Deputy Mayor of Kalaw) was a Privy Councillor, and a shifty nightdurwan (night-watchman) from the Mandalay Mission House had collaborated with Japanese officers in the Silver Grill Café.5 Only welfare workers were being issued with civilian travel permits, so Firth applied to become a Red Cross Assistant. He was turned down, but assumed the bogus title of ‘Superintending Methodist Chaplain for Burma’ which did the trick.6 At 10.30 p.m. on 4 December he boarded a train bound for Mandalay. The carriages were riddled with bullet holes. Seats, doors and windows had been stripped out. There was no sanitation, no lighting and no vacuum brakes. The sides of the track were strewn with overturned engines and damaged wagons. Makeshift Bailey bridges crossed stagnant gullies and stations were reduced to rubble. At each stop scruffy children shouted their wares – bananas, oranges, and cigarettes for a rupee, candles for 4 annas. Sullen Japanese prisoners-of-war cleared the line at Toungoo and humped passengers’ bags onto rice trucks for the onward journey. At Tatkon the passengers were bundled back onto a train bound for Mandalay. Pyawbwe and Thazi stations were in ruins and through the grime at Kyaukse Firth could make out Rev. San Nwe waving from the mission compound.7 The train edged over creaking bridges and finally ground to a halt at Peleik. The passengers clambered into a lorry which bumped along shell-pocked roads and through tumbledown suburbs into Mandalay.8 Firth gasped in astonishment. ‘Mandalay had returned to jungle’ and swathes of the city had disappeared completely. Mahazayabon was a ‘scene of desolation’ and ‘wide stretches of low jungle’ near the station ‘bordered roads once lined with fine buildings’.9 The Wesley Boys and Girls schools had gone. The Mission House was still standing but was now an Officers Club.10 Trees grew inside the charred walls of the church and the ruined tower stood out starkly from surrounding rubble (figure 8). Vandalised British gravestones in the cemetery had been daubed with graffiti. The Leper Home was a refugee camp and, next door, St John’s Roman Catholic Leper Asylum housed important [ 137 ]

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8 Wesley Church Mandalay. Preparations for the opening ceremony in January 1932. The fine, new building was gutted by Japanese bombs on 3 April 1942 and rebuilt after the war. The tower was demolished in 1949 during the Civil War, repaired, but damaged again by the army in the 1990s.

internees like Bishop Falières, the Vicar Apostolic of Mandalay, and Mother Gustave, Superior of St Joseph’s Convent in Maymyo. During the War the internees had lived alongside 250 lepers and had wandered freely around the city. Now they were in no great hurry to be ‘released’. Firth heard how the Methodist and Roman Catholic congregations had squabbled about who owned St Luke’s Church.11 [ 138 ]

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The District Commissioner, Mr Yarnold, told Firth that a mutual friend, Major French of the Burma Rifles, had been tortured. In the bombed-out Thamadawzay quarter (scene of so many pre-war scuffles) Firth bumped into a group of church members including a traumatised and frightened Maung Tin, who symbolised the depressed state of Mandalay itself.12 In January 1946 Firth toured the Methodist District, compiling inventories of bombed out buildings as he went. Meiktila was ‘completely destroyed’. In Kyaukse the Boys School was gutted and the slojd building had been damaged.13 Little remained of the Girls School or the Women’s Work bungalow, and the church roof had been blown off. A doctor was using the Mission House as his surgery. In Maymyo the railway quarters and the ABM rest-house had gone. The Methodist holiday houses were still standing. Indians were squatting in ‘Woodlands’, ‘Farlands’ was dilapidated but ‘Landsdowne’ was a billet for troops and was in excellent condition.14 Wesley High School in Pyawbwe was a grimy shell and the Mission House had been commandeered by the National High School. The headmaster, U San Ohn, and Mr Hardy, chairman of the governors, wanted to cooperate with the Methodists. In Chauk the Union Church had been used as a motor-repair workshop and was littered with oildrums and ‘bits of cars and lorries’. It was as if the Japanese mechanics had just walked out of the door. The town was very badly damaged but the Chauk Club swimming pool was still usable and Firth’s old house was standing. Many Wesley High School boys were working in the town and Firth chatted with Maung Ba Ohn.15 One church member, Ba Pyon, had been beaten to death by the Japanese and stories of everyday suffering were commonplace. In 1942 for instance, Mr Gill, the Firths’ old neighbour, had been snatched by Indian Nationalist Army soldiers from the factory where he worked. They dragged him away to spend the rest of the war in the jungle. For some obscure and unfair reason, the manager of Dawson’s Bank was making his life a misery.16 Pakokku was in a sorry state. The Boys High School, the Shwegu and Yesagyo schools, the church and the Mission compound had all been bombed.17 Vincent and Reed arrived in Mandalay in February 1946. They set off almost immediately on a fact-finding mission to the Upper and Lower Chindwin.18 The Mandalay–Monywa railway line had been ripped up and the bridges bombed. Travellers had to cross the Irrawaddy by ferry at Sagaing. Reed and Vincent boarded an IFC barge plying upriver. They perched on piles of rice on the open deck.19 In Monywa the Methodists huddled despondently in the mission compound. It was a sorry sight, for these were the legendary heroes who in 1942 had followed Daw [ 139 ]

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Chit May, Daw Thein Tin and Daw Aye Zin (the senior Bible Woman) to Lezin and Myobaw. The war had taken its toll on them and Reed was saddened by their lack of enterprise and by Rev. Pai Bwin’s lack of leadership. Allied bombs had caused mayhem in Monywa. The Mission House and the Girls School had been rased to the ground and the Wesleyan Boys High School, middle and primary schools were badly damaged. Further up the Chindwin River in a small place called Kani, Reed and Vincent met several Wesley High School boys. Kalewa, once a bustling trading post, had been flattened and was now empty. They continued their journey by truck along ‘bithess’ roads and over precarious Bailey bridges slung across deep ravines.20 Civilian buses ground up and down the Imphal–Dimapur Road trading black-market goods. Dacoits armed with modern automatic weapons preyed on travellers. The local people were lazy and grasping and demanded ‘large sums of money for the least bit of work’.21 Reed and Vincent reached Tahan on 3 March 1946. The wholesale slaughter of buffaloes prevented farmers from ploughing their fields which had reverted to jungle. The town was in ruins and unbelievably scruffy, but the old family traditions survived and every household seemed to be Christian. Tamu had been wrecked and was little more than a shabby bazaar where greedy merchants profited out of the traffic from Manipur. Only one Methodist remained in the once thriving mission station of Mawlaik. U Po Wine had led the others across the river to Laungkau.22 Like the infrastructure, Burmese society had been gutted. Old-style thakins wrestled with brash young communists. Burmans who had collaborated with the Japanese argued with those who had not. Emotions ran high. There was no effective government and much jockeying for position. The Governor was still in India. Allied troops struggled to enforce order, and hope rested on the shoulders of General Aung San. Only he had the charisma, intellect and coercive muscle to square the circles of divergent expectation. Kyangin in Henzada District was typical of many small Burmese towns in 1945. The local community was being torn apart by marches, demonstrations and political squabbles. U Ba Aye, the township officer, was run ragged by Marxist ‘Red-Shirts’ who were impatient with elderly socialists like Thakin Ba Han.23 The Thein Than Communist Party organised huge rallies, and strikes paralysed the Myanyaung State Post-Primary School.24 Turbulence of a different sort reigned in Mandalay and Kyaukse where Rule 21 (regulating sales of alcohol) was widely disregarded by consumers and purveyors alike with predictable [ 140 ]

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consequences. Lawlessness and uncertainty blighted morale as it did in most Burmese communities.25 Trade union militancy was the most pressing problem. The Director of Labour, A.C. Baker, blamed government indecision for the increasing industrial unrest. Workers in Rangoon went on strike on 26 January 1947.26 In 1947 the Government announced that it would abandon the minimum wage of Rs 20 per month. Teachers and steel-workers demonstrated, and 2,500 employees marched to Bandoola Square on 6 July. A General Strike seemed imminent.27 Red Flag communists fermented unrest in police forces up and down the country; 200 policemen from the Tharrawaddy and Insein divisions drove around Rangoon ‘waving Police Association flags’.28 Thakin Basein, Dr Ba Maw, U Ba Pe and U Saw urged police units in Mandalay to strike on 12 July, and another pair of shady characters, Wann Maung and Thakin Than Tun, incited police units in Kyaukse. Meanwhile, Karen leaders threatened to form a breakaway State, while pongyis in the Wineiksaya Committee openly defied the Government. Ugly confrontations flared out of nothing. On one occasion trigger-happy military policemen killed a group of young football supporters. The crumbling economy and disintegrating public order created an explosive atmosphere.29 When Sir Hubert Rance became British Governor in August 1946 he immediately dissolved the Executive Council and replaced it by an Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) Government led by General Aung San. Pulses quickened during 1947 as Aung San rallied popular support at one highly charged rally after another. He hammered home his slogans – ‘national unity’ and ‘complete and immediate independence’ outside the British Empire. In July a huge crowd crammed into the Zaw Cinema Hall in Rangoon. The atmosphere crackled with excitement as speakers demanded complete and immediate independence. There was no going back from here. It was obvious that independence would not solve all Burma’s problems. In particular, the economy was in a parlous state and Aung San reluctantly accepted that the minimum wage was no longer affordable. He argued that Burma had to choose between independence and the minimum wage, it could not have both. Sceptical workers were urged to sacrifice the minimum wage as an act of national charity. It was touch and go, but the Yebaw Association (former BIA soldiers) rallied to Aung San’s support and in the end independence won the day. Wealthy businessmen, delighted that the minimum wage had been ditched, donated Chevrolet trucks to the AFPFL leaders as tokens of their gratitude.30 It was still not certain that the British Government would accept Aung San’s demands. Civil servants like T.K. Pillay puzzled over an [ 141 ]

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9

General Aung San, 27 June 1947, in Bandoola Square shortly before his assassination.

enigmatic speech Attlee delivered in the House of Commons on 20 December 1946. Pillay knew that British Governments had a record of firing up Burmese hopes one moment and dashing them the next. He knew also that only the full package would now satisfy Burmese politicians and head off popular unrest. Behind the scenes Rance was warning of the serious consequences if complete independence was not granted immediately. The British Government was desperate to get rid of Burma, and Attlee gave assurances that he would not force any ‘unwilling people’ into the Empire.31 The stage seemed set for independence. Burma changed dramatically at 10.45 a.m. on 19 July 1947. A terse police report stated that ‘a party of 4 or 5 persons dressed in 12th Army military uniforms’ had ‘entered the Chamber and fired several shots which resulted in deaths and injuries’.32 General Aung San and several members of his Executive had been assassinated (figure 9). It was a national tragedy of catastrophic proportions.33 Communists [ 142 ]

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blamed ‘imperialist agents’, Thakin Than Tun accused ‘Nga Saw and British Imperialists’, the trade unionists, Rajan and Mukerjee, blamed the Saw–Sein–Maw coalition and Wann Maung, and the Red Guards blamed everyone else. Burma was rescued from the brink of disaster when moderate voices prevailed. Members of the People’s Volunteer Organisation (PVO), university students and the Karen National Union (KNU) all appealed for restraint.34 A bloodbath had been avoided, but Upper Burma remained very tense. Urgent prayers were offered in Methodist churches. The missionaries were warned to stay at home and their shocked congregations flocked down to Rangoon to shuffle past Aung San’s coffin in the Jubilee Hall.35 Huge crowds crammed into Bandoola Square on National Day in 1947. Thakin U Nu (General Aung San’s successor) appealed for calm and announced that independence arrangements would proceed as planned. Nervous Methodists held thanksgiving services in Mandalay and the whole country held its breath.36 On the evening of 3 January 1948, Sir Hubert Rance reflected quietly in the Shwedagon Pagoda. He penned a last forlorn message in the visitors’ book, calling for ‘peace and friendship’ between ‘our two countries’. The next day, 4 January 1948, was Independence Day, and at the same time Burma left the British Commonwealth. Thakin U Nu called for ‘racial, communal, political and personal’ unity, and the Methodist Synod expressed relief that power had been transferred without incident.37 The relief was premature, and celebration quickly gave way to deep foreboding as Burma descended into civil war. During the next two decades U Nu’s government teetered between survival and collapse and the Balkanisation of Burma often seemed likely. Insurgency corroded the economy, divided communities and blighted the lives of millions of people.38 Communist cadres had been ‘grooming’ isolated rural communities in Upper Burma since the war, and in 1948 they began to infiltrate towns like Chauk and Yamethin. PVO forces also advanced from power bases in Theytmyo, Prome and Magwe Districts.39 Before long, insurgents seemed able to flex their muscles at any time and anywhere between the Delta and Sagaing. Skirmishes between Karen, PVO and communist militia affected life in many small towns and villages, and from time to time even Mandalay was brought to a halt. When the Chiang Kai Shek regime collapsed in 1949, Kuomintang (KMT) troops under the command of Generals Limi and Liu Kuo Chwan crossed from China into Burma causing further havoc.40 Urgent battle-telegrams sputtered back and forth during 1949 and 1950. They revealed the weakness of government forces, which were [ 143 ]

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overstretched, badly equipped and underpaid. Soldiers were often reduced to subsisting ‘on jungle roots’.41 From time to time during the early 1950s, government forces were pinned down in Rangoon and the Delta towns. The year 1952 was the nadir of government fortunes when loose alliances were formed between the Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO) and the KMT, and between PVOs and the White and Red Flag communists. The future looked very grim.42 Gradually government forces managed to fight back, and in October 1953 U Nu felt strong enough to outlaw the Burma (White Flag) Communist Party (BCP) and the PVO. The tide began to turn as one by one towns south of Mandalay were retaken by government troops. By 1955 KMT forces had been driven back into China, KNDO units retreated into Lower Burma, and although battles were never won or lost in this most inconclusive of wars, the Government felt confident of success. Even then, the insurgency was far from over. The removal of Than Tun’s communist units from Pakokku was yet to begin and the area around Pyawbwe remained in insurgent hands for many more months.43 Headlines always tell one story and ordinary people another. Thousands of tiny incidents never hit the headlines as the Civil War raged in Upper Burma. Tragedy and farce were never far apart. In January 1949 two boys served customers in a Nyaungbinwun teashop one moment and hacked them to death the next. A battle near Monywa could start only after the two sides had rounded up a herd of elephants. A massive government counter-insurgency operation ended in the capture of a solitary elderly man armed with a replica gun, and suspects in Pakokku stole cigars from the desk of their interrogator who had gone to the toilet.44 There was nothing either petty or farcical about Firth’s experiences in 1949. His account was a masterpiece of war reportage. It breathlessly and brilliantly conveyed that sense of bewilderment and powerlessness felt by thousands of ordinary people. In March 1949 Firth and Reed were trapped in the crossfire of the battle for Mandalay. Most Europeans had already left the city which was under siege. Insurgents controlled the railway lines, main roads and key stretches of the Irrawaddy. The only way in and out of Mandalay was by air. Even vegetables and petrol had to be airlifted in.45 The last plane flew out of Mandalay at noon on 11 March 1949. It carried government officials, Mrs Firth and their young son Richard. Immediately after the plane had taken off government troops left the city and retreated in the direction of Sagaing. Karen insurgents marched into Mandalay and occupied the Fort (figure 10). Communist units arrived at about the same time and set up positions in the centre of the town.46 Mandalay was now at the mercy of rival rebel troops who left [ 144 ]

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Burmese Civil War: Karen soldiers attacking Insein on 9 April 1949. At the same time Mandalay was also under attack from insurgents.

behind them a trail of burned cars and looted cash. People from outlying villages swarmed in like vultures, picking over whatever was left. Drugs from the hospital were particularly prized. A committee of ten communists nominally controlled the city which remained extremely volatile. On 16 March a young boy was killed by a bomb-blast in the Father Lafon Orphanage and street-fighting flared up intermittently between Red and White communist factions.47 Firth was wakened in the early hours of 2 April by heavy mortar fire. It signalled the return of government troops. They had seized the old civil hospital and court buildings and forced the communists to retreat. The Karen troops remained in the Fort a few yards north of the Methodist compound while PVO units dug in a few yards to the south. The missionaries were caught ‘between two fires’.48 For five days shots from government, PVO and Karen snipers whistled over the Mission House from all directions. Firth, Reed and their colleagues took what cover they could as windows, tiles, brick walls and wooden [ 145 ]

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outbuildings smashed around them. The kitchens, where the Burmese servants worked, faced the Fort and were in the direct firing line.49 On 6 April, the Karen units slipped out of the Fort by the east gate and surrendered to Kachin units loyal to the government. Not for the first time, nor for the last, government forces claimed control of the city. They set up a command post in the Steel Brothers’ house a few yards further along South Moat Road from the mission compound.50 Most people seemed to assume that the battle for Mandalay was over at this point, and on Easter Sunday they flocked to a thanksgiving service in Wesley Church. They had assumed wrongly. The ceasefire did not last long and in the early hours of 18 April Firth wakened again to the sound of heavy gunfire. This time PVOs had infiltrated the city. Government troops retreated from the Steel Brothers’ house into the Fort.51 Mortar fire was exchanged between the Fort and PVO positions. Once again snipers’ bullets criss-crossed the mission compound.52 Public services collapsed, the post office closed, phones stopped working and there were prolonged power cuts.53 On 24 April troop reinforcements arrived from Maymyo enabling government troops to advance out of the Fort. The chatter of small arms fire could be heard from the direction of the Leper Home and it gradually moved closer to the mission compound. Suddenly, three deafening explosions were followed by a deathly silence. Firth looked up and saw that the Wesley Church tower had been blown up. It had only just been rebuilt after the war. The opening service had taken place just a few days before.54 The tower provided a strategic vantage point overlooking the Fort and South Moat Road. It had been reduced to a smouldering ruin of bricks and shattered glass. The minaret on the neighbouring mosque commanded similar views and was also demolished. For the moment at least the battle was over and government forces could claim to control the city.55 At last Firth could concentrate on finding out what had happened to his colleagues elsewhere in the District. Everyone had a tale to tell. When government officials left Kyaukse on 20 February 1949, Saya Hla Pe had removed equipment and drugs from the hospital. He hid them for safekeeping in the Methodist Church and returned them to the hospital after government forces recaptured Kyaukse in July. Although Silcock was not directly affected by the Civil War in Kalaw, shortages of candles and oil encouraged people to go to ‘bed at sunset’. Kingswood School was closed and the children were sent home. Kinchin and Nicholson were trapped in the Chin Hills. Nicholson’s fiancée had just arrived in Rangoon, and despite enormous difficulties, their wedding went ahead there as planned.56 When government troops were despatched from Pakokku to deal [ 146 ]

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with Kuomintang forces in the frontier district, the town was left undefended. BCP forces marched in to fill the void and they controlled both Pakokku and Chauk until July 1950. Rev. San Nwe managed to travel between the two towns from time to time, but it was no place for a woman and Miss Hollinshed was marooned in Chauk, unable to return to her house in Pakokku for several months. Although the PVOs controlled the oilfields, Chauk itself was quiet and oil production was maintained throughout. It was still too dangerous for the missionaries to travel outside the towns except in armed convoys. ‘Every little bit of work outside of the town’s guarded gates [was] a real triumph.’ As a general rule government forces ruled the townships and insurgents controlled the countryside.57 Although Monywa had been cut off during the fighting, one small episode lifted the spirits. A new District Superintendent of Police was appointed in 1949. He left his family in Rangoon thinking that Monywa would be too dangerous for them. One day he was astonished to see two unaccompanied English women walking along the riverbank. He learned that they were Wesleyan missionaries and that they often walked about the town on their own. When he met one of them, Miss Florence Cleaver, he told her that if she could live in Monywa it must be safe for his family to live there too.58 The villages around Pyawbwe and Yamethin (in the Pyawbwe circuit) were completely out of bounds. The area remained in insurgent hands until 1956. People dared not ‘profess themselves to be Christians’ although the Circuit Report noted that Sunday collections had increased, townsfolk were more friendly and one village school insisted on holding Christian assemblies in defiance of the insurgents.59 During the Civil War, Rangoon had been ‘cut off from Upper Burma except by air’. Willans picked up only garbled snippets of news. He heard that Methodist ministers had defended church property against insurgents and that dacoits were ‘causing considerable trouble’. There were some hopeful signs in Rangoon by December 1950. Imported medicines and printing paper began to appear in shops and Christian Chin soldiers were hailed as heroes. Willans was told that most of the large towns were now in government hands and that Wesley Church Mandalay had ‘been nobly renovated’.60 Notwithstanding Willans’s optimism, Burma was now almost ungovernable. Sawbwas (hereditary Shan princes), warlords and local ‘bosses’ jostled for position in the frontier districts.61 Silverstein blamed U Nu for encouraging the sawbwas one moment and removing their powers the next. In 1955 a number of local bosses met in Taunggyi. They formed a Social Democratic Party and rumours persisted that America [ 147 ]

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was about to support a revolt in the Shan States.62 All the while the Cabinet squabbled over payments to political lackeys, competing projects and the like. Kyaw Nyein (U Nu’s Deputy) openly criticised his own government and secular ministers squirmed each time U Nu withdrew for Buddhist meditation.63 In the midst of this disarray a second national election was held in 1956.64 AFPFL won convincingly, but immediately after the election U Nu surprised everyone by taking a year’s sabbatical. He said that he was going to ‘clean up’ the AFPFL although he achieved few tangible results. When he returned to office in June 1957 he was convinced that the Party had lost touch with its rank-and-file members. In January 1958 he summoned an All-Burma Congress of the AFPFL. It was a mistake. The situation was too fragile and U Nu was dependant on the support of General Ne Win who insisted that he sideline the communist faction. It infuriated the AFPFL left-wingers and the party split in two. U Ba Swe and Kyaw Nyein broke away to form the so-called ‘Stable AFPFL’ faction, leaving U Nu, Thakin Tin and Thakin Kyaw with the ‘Clean AFPFL’ faction. U Nu crossed the Rubicon in April 1958 when he arrested several ‘Stable’ faction activists. It provoked a furious row. U Ba Swe tabled ‘no-confidence’ motions in Parliament and on 26 September 1958 U Nu declared a state of emergency and resigned. He handed over to General Ne Win.65 The army imposed martial law and seized airports and radio stations. When armed troops appeared on the streets it looked very much like a military coup. However, semantics were important in Burma. General Ne Win promised to hold free elections and to restore civilian rule. Most people believed him and in any case they were tired of the insurgency, food shortages, inflation, foreign exchange deficits and continuing security problems. The black market dominated everyday life and even virtuous Methodist missionaries like Bishop and Homer had to play the system. Western governments were very preoccupied with China, Korea and Vietnam at the time and they regarded General Ne Win as the only viable alternative to a communist takeover in Burma. Ne Win proved himself to be an astute politician. He disarmed his critics by drafting well-respected public figures into key positions in the Government – among them were U Thein Maung and U Chan Tun Aung.66 National Solidarity Associations were formed to counteract ‘the power of the local Bo’ and village headmen were reinstated. For a time there was relative peace, but of course the jury was still out. On the one hand Maung Maung applauded Ne Win’s resolve, on the other Silverstein accused him of recreating colonial structures.67 [ 148 ]

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U Nu in April 1955.

It was inevitable that eventually General Ne Win’s popularity would decline. Desperate economic conditions had necessitated unpalatable measures and ordinary people were alienated by the most trivial of regulations. Housewives were allowed to buy only one chicken at a time in the market and betel was outlawed. However, true to his word, General Ne Win held national elections in February 1960. The elections were unusual for being held at all. U Nu agreed to oppose the communists and in return Ne Win remained neutral. He even distanced himself from the National Solidarity Association (NSA).68 The opposition was hopelessly fragmented and the ‘Clean AFPFL’ won an overwhelming victory. In 1960 General Ne Win handed power back to U Nu.69 U Nu was an admirable leader in many ways. He was courageous, tolerant, humane and wise. He was also enigmatic and complex and oscillated between political activism and religious meditation (figure 11). He made decisions on the hoof and allowed his colleagues to become ‘slothful, nepotistic and smug’. Critics accused him of mismanaging both democratic institutions and the economy. He valiantly tried to reconcile ethnicity and religion and to square the circles of socialism, [ 149 ]

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capitalism and Buddhism. At times he gave the appearance of being all things to all men. U Nu was slightly otherworldly, an ideological socialist, for example, whereas Ne Win used socialism pragmatically.70 In the 1960 election U Nu had promised to make Buddhism the state religion. It was a vote winner, and it implied that support for U Nu was an act of piety. There was much rejoicing when Buddhism duly became the state religion in August 1961, but it also caused unease among army officers and non-Buddhists. The legislation was muddled. People were unsure when and where they were permitted to practise and ‘teach their religions’. Religious strife looked likely and U Nu had to appeal for restraint.71 Firth suspected that U Nu’s religious policy and his refusal to allow the import of foreign capital were two sides of the same coin – both smacking of xenophobia. He felt that it was just a matter of time before the missionaries would be told to leave Burma.72 Sharp rises in customs duties and sales taxes coupled with the nationalisation of importing companies had exacerbated Burma’s economic problems, while ethnic disputes compromised national security and undermined U Nu’s authority. Ethnic tensions came to a head in 1961 by which time rebels already controlled a tenth of Burma. Now they began to threaten the Shan and Kachin States too. Karen and communist insurgents entered into an alliance against the Government. The press insisted on representing the Karen conflict as a battle between Christianity and Buddhism. As a result, many Burmans wrongly assumed that the Methodists supported the Karen insurgents. Firth was insistent that Karen forces were motivated by political (not religious) considerations and years later Reed imputed the military junta’s ‘anti-Christian’ rhetoric to the misconceptions of the early 1960s.73 On 6 October 1961 the Nation newspaper insinuated that U Nu had secretly promised autonomy to the Shans, Arakenese and Mons. It was the final straw. Senior army officers led by General Ne Win, Brigadier Maung Maung and Brigadier Aung Shwe had been plotting to remove U Nu from office, and in March 1962 they struck. General Ne Win seized power again and this time he did not intend to hand it back.74

Notes 1 2 3

Documentary sequences began and ended arbitrarily and access is proscribed after 1950. Security in Burma previously depended on the deployment of Indian soldiers. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN4/Burma District Synod, 17 January 1947. See accounts of the post-war period in R.B. Smith, ‘Some Contrasts between Burma and Malaya in British Policy towards Southeast Asia, 1942–1946’, in British Policy and the Transfer of Power in Asia: Documentary Perspectives, ed. R.B. Smith and A.J. Stockwell, London, SOAS, 1988, pp. 30–76; Taylor, The State in Burma, p. 242;

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5

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7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

Hugh Tinker (ed.), Burma: The Struggle for Independence 1944–1948, London, HMSO, 1984; Hugh Tinker, The Union of Burma: A Study of the First Years of Independence, London, Oxford University Press, 1967, pp. 42–47; Balwant Singh, Independence and Democracy in Burma 1945–1952: The Turbulent Years, Ann Arbor: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, 1993; and Rajshekhar, Myanmar’s Nationalist Movement (1906–1948) and India, New Delhi, South Asian Publishers, 2006. See SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box6C/Folder-14, Chapman–Rattenbury, 25 April 1945; Correspondence FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 3 July 1945; Uncatalogued/ MRP/Box6D/Folder-23(f), G.E. Firth, Diary and Notes on ‘Conditions on Return to Burma after the War’ – upon which much of the following report is based. CAS(B) was responsible for emergency welfare and reconstruction work. Holden followed behind the 19th Indian Division, commanded by Major-General T.W. Rees; Firth arrived on SS Navasa on 23 November 1945. The Bible Society building is on Sule Pagoda Road (opposite Traders Hotel). SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box6D/Folder-26(e), Chapman–Rattenbury, 14 September 1945, and Correspondence/FBN3/Shepherd–Notes, 23 June 1944. Rev. Olmstead was in CAS(B). Rev. George West SPG had been in Burma since 1921; Bishop of Rangoon 1935–54; he was in England in 1942, but supervised the reconstruction of Rangoon Cathedral (the Japanese had used it as a brewery). Firth was asked to find out about Ferrier, who died in Rangoon in June 1945, and Daniels, who died on the way to India. He was told that Christians had discovered the body of Flt Lt Buchanan who had been shot down on 2 May 1945 near Syriam. Maung Sein Tun was U Po Tun’s son. He became a colonel and was still living in Yangon in January 2007. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Shepherd–Notes, 23 June 1944. Colonel Vorley (officer-in-charge evacuation in 1942) was responsible for CAS(B); Chapman– Rattenbury, 25 April 1945, and Firth Diary entry: 7 November 1945, Miss Killick (Red Cross) was too preoccupied with 1,400 cases worth Rs 1,000 that had been pilfered in transit to spend much time worrying about Firth. The Kyaukse Mission is next to the railway line. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6D/Folder-23(f), Firth, Diary and Notes. Donald Miller (General Secretary Mission to Lepers) Red Earth and Summer Lilies, private publication. Mahazayabon is the area where the Wesley Girls School was and the Methodist District HQ is located. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6D/Folder-23(f), Firth, Diary and Notes, the drawing room was a bar and the bedrooms upstairs a dance floor. Burma Today, June 1945; the internees included Father Ghier, Father Mandin and thirty nuns who had worked with lepers before the war. Wesley Leper Home patients transferred to St John’s in 1942, although one of them, Raja, was anxious to return. St Luke’s was the Wesley Leper Home Church. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6D/Folder-26. The slojd school was the innovative Wesleyan technical school in Kyaukse. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6D/Folder-23(f), Firth, Diary and Notes. The houses were purchased in 1930s for the use of missionaries during the hot season. Rev. Ba Ohn; first President of Burmese Conference 1965; d. 2000. His sons, daughter and grandchildren are active Methodists today. Gill had protected senior Dawson employees during the war. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6D/Folder-23(f), Firth, Diary and Notes. The Mission House was damaged, but is still used as the manse. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6D, Report of tour by Vincent, Reed and Saya U Hla Gyaw (Mandalay Circuit Agent), 21 February–9 April 1946. The IFC used army motorboats, each of which towed two barges at three miles an hour. Bus travel was more expensive (Rs 15 per person and extra for baggage). Bithess was hessian treated with bitumen. Workers were paid huge amounts in devalued Japanese currency during the war.

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SOAS/MMS/Minutes/FBN3/Synod Representative Session, 1947. U Po Wine had been a bully and was expelled from his village. He was converted to Christianity in Mawlaik and became a full-time Methodist Church worker. He returned to Mawlaik in April 1946, ‘his evangelistic zeal undiminished’. Robert H. Taylor, ‘The Burmese Communist Movement and its Indian Connection: Formation and Factionalism’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 14:1(1983), 99; and Myanmar National Archives (MNA)/Yangon, Confidential Letter/406/4C Kyangin, U Ba Aye–U Hla DC Henzada, 22 March 1947. Socialists in Kyangin split into two. Activists included Thakin Ba Han, Boh Ohn, Tun Kyi and Thakin Chit Maung. Taylor explains that the Colonial Government had suspected links between international Marxism and thakins during the 1930s. (British colonial rulers were called Thakins – the equivalent in Burmese of ‘masters’ or sahibs. During the 1930s Burmese nationalists appropriated the title Thakin for themselves.) MNA/Yangon/Letter/DC Henzada, 29 March 1947; 280 communists demonstrated in Henzada; MNA/Yangon/from Po Aung, Headmaster Myanyaung State PostPrimary School, 17 December 1946 and 20 January 1947. MNA/Yangon/ 17 January 1947; Superintendent of Excise. MNA/Yangon/Daily Intelligence Summary/Rangoon Police, 27 February 1947 and Memorandum; Industry and Labour Department, 11 March 1947. MNA/Yangon/Daily Intelligence Summary/Rangoon Police, 3 and 5 July 1947. MNA/Yangon/Daily Intelligence Summary/Rangoon Police, 7 and 12 July 1947. MNA/Yangon/Daily Intelligence Summary/Rangoon Police, 3, 9, 10 and 14 July 1947. In Mandalay during the late 1940s there was sporadic infighting between rival groups of politically active monks. The so-called Wineiksaya Committee was one of many factions. MNA/Yangon/Daily Intelligence Summary/Rangoon Police, 11, 14 and 15 July 1947. See MNA/Yangon/Box 18/File 2-P/271/1–15(A), 1947; Donnison, The Last of the Guardians, p. 329; and Nicholas Tarling, ‘A New and Better Cunning: British Wartime Planning for Post-War Burma, 1942–43’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 13:1 (1982). Many British politicians assumed that independence would follow immediately after the war. MNA/Yangon/Daily Intelligence Summary/Rangoon Police, 19 July 1947. Robert H. Taylor, ‘Politics in Late Colonial Burma: The Case of U Saw’, Modern Asian Studies, 10:2 (1976), 161–193. MNA/Yangon/Daily Intelligence Summary/Rangoon Police, 21 and 22 July 1947. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Monywa Circuit Women’s Work Report, 1947 and General Letter, 18 January 1947. SOAS/MMS/Burma/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Pakokku Circuit Women’s Work Report, 1947. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod General Letter, 17 January 1948. For a full account of the period, see Tinker, Burma: The Struggle for Independence; also, Burma’s Fight for Freedom, Department of Information and Broadcasting: Government of Burma, 4 January 1948. Josef Silverstein, ‘Civil War and Rebellion in Burma’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 21:1 (1990), 114; and SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Women’s Work Pakokku Circuit Report, 1948 and Synod Minutes, January 1949 The People’s Volunteer Organisation consisted of veterans loyal to Aung San. Singh, Independence and Democracy in Burma, pp. 125 ff. Labourers repairing the Yamethin–Takton railway line were killed in October 1951, and a train was derailed at Ywadan. Transcripts of military signals, for example MNA/Yangon/Signal-7, 7 January 1950, Signal-22, 17 January 1950, Signal-53, 8 February and 7 May 1950; Signal-161/to Ministry of Home Affairs/Rangoon, 11 and 20 May 1950. Tinker, The Union of Burma, pp. 50–52. Tinker, The Union of Burma, pp. 52–56. MNA/Yangon/File 187/180/RI/Report on Monywa, 1949; SDO-Gangaw/8 July

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1950; Weekly Intelligence Report PSO Myitche to DSP, Pakokku w/e 11 February, 14 September 1950. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6C/Folder-14, Firth Correspondence, 25 July 1949. Insurgents held the railway at Nyaunglebin, Toungoo and Thazi. Potatoes cost 4 annas each, charcoal – previously 1 anna per bag – now cost Rs 17 per bag. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box C/Folder-14, Firth, Diary, 11 March 1949. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box C/Folder-14, Firth, Diary, 12–31 March 1949. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Box C/Folder-14, Firth, Diary, 2 April 1949. Rev. and Mrs Reed, Rev. Garrad (SPG) and Miss Mackley were also in the mission compound. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6D/Folder-26(e), Firth–Mrs Firth, 12 April 1949. According to Firth, fighting lasted from the 2 to 6 April 1949. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box C/Folder-14, Firth, Diary, 6 April 1949. Government troops were nicknamed ‘yebaws’ (literally: ‘comrades of boldness’). SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box C/Folder-14, Firth, Diary, 18 April 1949. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6D/Folder-26(e), Firth, Correspondence, 7 May 1949. Yebaws stole boots and a red handkerchief belonging to Garrad. See SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box C/Folder-14, Firth, Diary, 24 April 1949, and Box 6D/Folder-26(e), Firth–Rattenbury, 7 May 1949. Yebaw snipers had fired into the Fort from the tower. Firth would have suggested barricading the entrance instead of blowing it up had he been asked. The tower was later repaired, but in the 1990s the army lowered it again. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6D/Folder-26(e), Firth, Correspondence 25 July 1949. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6C/Folder-14, Firth, Correspondence, 25 July 1949. Rev. F.A. Kinchin b. West Kensington 1902; ed. Latymer Upper School and Handsworth College 1930; employed by Port of London Authority; served in Burma for twenty years. Met Rosa Goddard on furlough; married for fifty years; d. 1995. Rev. Edgar H. Nicholson b. 1923; Richmond College; served in Burma 1947–58; fluent Burmese and Lushai speaker; married Vera Hubbard; two children, Peter (born in Tahan) and Brenda; Nicholson worked mainly in Tahan, but also tutored at Wesley College Mandalay; circuits in Bloxwich, Wem and Melton Mowbray; d. 2007. MNA/Yangon/SDO-Gangaw, 28 September, 5 October and 23 October 1950; SOAS/ MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6C/Folder-14, Firth, Correspondence, 25 July 1949; and Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6D/Folder-26(a–c), Daw Aye Zin, Florence Cleaver and Nesta Morgan, Report on Women’s Work in Monywa, 1951. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6D/Folder-26(a–c), Report on Women’s Work in Monywa, 1951. He was a Christian and his wife, a former pupil of Kyaukse Wesley Girls School, had been taught by Daw Aye Zin, the Women’s Worker in Monywa. His wife and five daughters successfully settled in Monywa. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170/Pyawbwe Circuit Reports, 1955–56. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Willans, circular letter, November 1950; and Burma District report, 1950. For example Naw Seng in Kachin State and U Kyaw Min in Arakan. See U Khin Maung Kyi, ‘Patterns of Accommodation to Bureaucratic Authority in a Transitional Culture: A Sociological Analysis of Burmese Bureaucrats with Respect to their Orientations towards Authority’, unpublished PhD Thesis, Cornell University, 1966, pp. 110–111; Silverstein, Burma: Military Rule, p. 78; and Taylor, The State in Burma, p. 269. Taylor estimates that a third of civil servants failed to return in 1945, and that 50 per cent of top-grade administrative officers resigned between 1947 and 1948. Many doctors, police officers and engineers deserted. John Sidel coined the word ‘bossism’ to describe the phenomenon (see Eva-Lotta E. Hedman and John T. Sidel, Philippine Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century: Colonial Legacies, Post-Colonial Trajectories, London, Routledge, 2000, pp. 88–89). During the 1950s local strongmen and political bosses ran alternative forms of government in outlying parts of Burma. They were often given the title Bo (captain or officer). For example, Naw Seng was the Bo in the Kachin State (he had

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been Commander of 1st Kachin Rifles during colonial times) and U Kyaw Min was the Bo in Arakan. See John H. Badgley, ‘Burma’s Political Crisis’, Pacific Affairs, 31:4 (1958), 337; also, Richard Butwell and Fred von der Mehden, ‘The 1960 Election in Burma’, Pacific Affairs, 33:2 (1960), 144. Kyaw Nyein opposed the rice ‘barter’ agreements with China and Russia, while U Win, U Tin and U Rachid favoured spending on health, education and religious projects. Kyaw Nyein, U Tun Win, Thakin Chit Maung and Thakin Tha Khin wanted to concentrate spending on industrial, agricultural and commercial projects. U Ba Swe promoted defence projects. The first national elections for the bicameral parliament were in 1951–52. Frank N. Trager, ‘The Political Split in Burma’, Far Eastern Survey, 27:10 (1958), 148–153; Trager, ‘Political Divorce in Burma’, Foreign Affairs 37:2 (1958). U Nu left midway through the Four Year Pyidawtha Plan 1952–60. Thakin Tin, an outspoken Marxist, and U Ba Swe wanted to reconcile Buddhism and Marxism. The ‘Clean AFPFL’ was renamed the Pyidaungsu Party. Both had been chief justices. Taylor, The State in Burma, p. 267; Maung Maung, Burma and General Ne Win, London, Asia Publishing House, 1969, p. 24; and Silverstein, Burma: Military Rule, p. 78. NSA was Ne Win’s protégé, once described as a ‘bamboo-spear squad’. See Lee S. Bigelow, ‘The 1960 Election in Burma’, Far Eastern Survey, 29:5 (1960), 70–74. Ne Win initially intended to hold the elections in April 1959. The Clean AFPFL won 149 seats; Stable AFPFL 30 seats; NUF 0 seats (NUF was a quasicommunist party); U Kyaw Nyein and U Ba Swe were defeated; Dr Saw Hla Tun and the Stable AFPFL won in Karen areas. Honours were even in Kachin State (PECDO was pro-‘Clean’, and KNC pro-‘Stable’). The Chin States were divided. Independents won Kayah State. In the Shan State the United Hill People’s Organisation, Pa-o National Organisation and Independents all won seats. The National United Organisation won in Arakan. This was the last democratic national election to be held in Burma. See Louis J. Walinsky,‘The Rise and Fall of U Nu’, Pacific Affairs, 38:3/4 (1965–66), 274–276; and Richard Butwell, ‘The Four Failures of U Nu’s Second Premiership’, Asian Survey, 2 (May 1962), 7–8. Walinsky cites the example of rice deals with Mikoyan in 1956. See SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/T300: Synod 1961, Minutes; and SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Jones–Childe, 11 August 1961. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6D/Folder-26(a–c), Firth, Correspondence, 14 June 1949. See SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued /MRP/Box 6D/Folder-26(a–c), Firth Correspondence, 8 February and 6 March 1949; Box 6C/Folder-14, Firth–Staff, 25 July 1949; and Address by Reed to Eastern Committee, 1966. During the war the British Government had agreed to a Karen State in principle, but no location unoccupied by the Burmans could be found; the New Statesman of April 1949 accused the missionaries of encouraging the Karens to fight. See Butwell, ‘The Four Failures’, 3–5. U Nu had offered Maung Maung and Aung Shwe ambassadorial posts. Other officers were sent abroad as military attachés – it didn’t work.

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In 1942 Chapman had dreamed of the day when the missionaries would return to find ‘a little Church pure as gold and tested in the fire’.1 When Holden attended a Sunday service in Klaipo’s house in Mahazayabon in April 1945 he discovered that the little Church had certainly been tested in fire, but it had survived. The Methodists had met weekly to pray and exchange gossip. Rev. U Po Tun had married Po Chain’s widow, Harada, the Japanese photographer had been very helpful and eight members of U Tun Maung’s family had been killed during a bombing raid in Kyaukse. Several Methodists were working as coolies to make ends meet. Ma Ma Lay had married a Buddhist, but few others had ‘fallen back’ into Buddhism. Holden discovered that the items buried under the floor of the District Office in April 1942 had been looted, but he assured Chapman (whether it was true or not) that everyone was looking forward to the missionaries’ return.2 A few months later Firth arrived in Mandalay. He also attended a service in Klaipo’s house. U Po Tun was the preacher. Dr Jamaldin, Ba Yin and Hilda Tun Maung were in the congregation. Firth sensed that there had been difficulties. People had ‘worked against’ U Po Tun and he had quarrelled with U San Nwe.3 Reed, Vincent and Varney joined Firth a few weeks later. They quickly picked up the reins of office and the Burmese ministers reverted to the subordinate positions they had held previously.4 Mandalay was not yet considered safe for European women and no new male missionary had arrived since 1937. Prices had risen by 300 per cent since 1939 and rice cost ten times more than before the war. The going rate for servants was Rs 300 per month (Rs 600 for a married man), while missionaries’ salaries had remained the same. The mission houses were dilapidated, unsanitary and riddled with white ants. [ 155 ]

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It was rumoured that forty new Baptist missionaries were on their way to Burma, that their cost-of-living allowances had been increased by 75 per cent and that ABM was going to pay their income-tax bills. Life seemed very unfair. The Methodists demanded an increase of 33 per cent in their own meagre ‘Burma dearness allowances’.5 Significantly, perhaps, the only new Methodist initiative, a project for Anglo-Japanese reconciliation, was suggested by a Japanese prisoner-ofwar, not by a missionary. The first post-war synod in 1946 was a tetchy affair. Burmese ministers were aggrieved that their wartime exploits had not been recognised. To make amends the missionaries agreed to devote a whole day to the exchange of war stories and celebrations of bravery. U Hla Pe was fêted as the symbol of everyone’s courage.6 The gesture failed to lance the boil and anti-missionary resentment simmered below the surface. A curious popularity poll was held in which Synod members voted for missionaries they wanted to stay, and against those they wanted to go. Firth (as Chairman) was exempt from the process and only one missionary was ‘voted back’ unanimously. The others all had several votes cast against them. Constitutionally it meant nothing, but it felt like a lynch mob. It was a timely warning that the missionaries could not just pick up where they had left off before the war.7 Firth’s assurances that the missionaries ‘had not come back to take over again’ cut little ice, and he showed no sign of ceding authority to the Burmans.8 The 1947 Synod was more positive. The twenty-seven-year-old Maung Ba Ohn preached for an hour – brilliantly and without notes – and the ‘sincere and earnest’ Ma Pu Lay made her debut. They were students together at the Wesley Theological Training Institution which had reopened in May 1946.9 Methodists in Kyaukse visited prisoners, the Pakokku Girls’ League helped in hospitals and the Young Lushai Christian Association campaigned against alcohol. Christians in Mandalay attempted unsuccessfully to open a ‘Union Christian Hospital’, but a Mandalay Methodist District Children’s Home was already in operation.10 Unfortunately these good news stories were offset by an underlying malaise. Everyone was strapped for cash. U Hla Pe and U Pai Bwin borrowed money to help their sons through university. Moral turpitude prevailed. U Maung Gyi was ‘living with a woman’ of intemperate ‘drinking habits’. Far too many members drank and gambled, and dacoity was sweeping through the towns.11 As usual real-estate and membership statistics dominated Synod business. Lists of damaged churches, schools, mission houses and dispensaries were compiled and recompiled endlessly.12 British Army units [ 156 ]

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refused to relinquish requisitioned mission houses, looters stripped damaged schools and in 1948 an earthquake brought other buildings crashing down.13 On the other hand, Wesley Church Mandalay had been repaired, work had started on rebuilding the Monywa Mission House, the army had handed back the Mawlaik Mission House and some redundant village schools had been sold off.14 Firth and Reed began to bombard the Missionary Society with requests for grants to repair and rerepair war-damaged buildings. Wesley Church Mandalay was a case in point. It had been gutted during the war, restored, reopened in April 1949, damaged again when government forces demolished the tower and now it would cost Rs 20,000 to repair it again.15 The final straw was the request for Rs 16,000 to repair Monywa School. The MMS Eastern Committee asked why it should ‘spend this, build tomorrow and have it knocked down the day after’. Rev. Donald Childe (the new Mission Secretary) warned that in future a ‘political-condition test’ would be applied to any building-grant application from Upper Burma.16 Reed was not amused. He blamed newspaper articles for misrepresenting conditions in Burma, and Childe for believing them. He protested that only Wesley Church Mandalay had been rerepaired and that Burma had not yet received its ‘fair share’ of money from the Methodist Reconstruction Fund. He insisted that he had applied for only one other grant – to repair servants’ quarters in Monywa. In any case, he said, it was false economy to postpone renovation work, although he had deliberately held back requests for many urgent schemes. He simply wanted ‘permanence’ and ‘quality’ whereas Childe seemed satisfied with the ‘makeshift’ and ‘shoddy’.17 There was a further complication. In 1949 a law was passed prohibiting non-Burmans from owning or leasing property. All mission stations were now at risk and Reed urged the Missionary Society to transfer its property into a ‘Burma Methodist Trust Association’. It took nearly a decade of cajoling and bickering before the Trust was finally established in 1958.18 Membership statistics were never far from Firth’s mind. They told an all too familiar story. There were only 1,063 full members in the whole of Upper Burma in 1941. The number had dropped to 886 in 1946 and had then risen again slightly to 1,047 in 1948. These statistics were unimpressive enough, but behind them lay two particularly worrying trends. First, a very sharp decline in membership figures in the Burmese circuits had been offset by considerable increases in the Lushai and Khongsai circuits.19 Second, even in Mandalay, Monywa, Pakokku and Kyaukse – the heartlands of Burman Methodism – Chins (rather than Burmans) were bolstering dwindling membership returns. [ 157 ]

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If anything, Buddhist opinion had hardened during the Japanese Occupation.20 In 1949 Firth urged his congregation in Mandalay to go out and convert Buddhist Burma, but the exhortation lacked any real bite. The offensive, when it came, was short on aggression and long on charm.21 Daw Mya Tin, a Bible Woman, discussed religious issues with a Buddhist nun living on Kyaukse Hill, Daw Aye Zin taught Buddhist urchins in the Aung Daw Mu quarter of Mandalay, and Daw Ngwe Wint started a Sunday school for Buddhist children in Pakokku.22 In fact a membership time-bomb was ticking, for single young women predominated in most congregations. They were likely to marry Buddhist husbands and then leave the Church. Village societies were already feeling the effect. Myobaw village had reverted to Buddhism and only one Christian family remained in Lezin, the most celebrated of all Methodist villages.23 It was true that Methodists were no longer castigated for their colonial affiliations, and interestingly in July 1947 pongyis demonstrated, not against British missionaries but against the secular intentions of General Aung San. Pongyi-energies were being channelled into idiosyncratic projects like ‘U Lawkanahta’s mission to America to prevent World War III’.24 However, a gloomy District Report for 1955 confirmed Sheldon’s prognosis that the battle for Buddhist converts in Upper Burma was unwinnable.25 It is ten years since the War and Occupation . . . there is little sense of continuity . . . Today most missionaries and nationals . . . lack experience of earlier conditions to guide them in the present time . . . There is an air of uncertainty both in the Church and the State . . . It seems as if the Burmese Church has been standing still. Membership has been declining and the leaders are growing older. To cap it all, only three Burmese ministers have entered the work since the war, and there has been no new Burmese candidate for the ministry since 1948.26

Subaltern politics was another cause of pain.27 In 1950 Rev. U Po Tun had succeeded Firth as Chairman of the District. He was the first Burman to hold the post and would have responsibility for the management and discipline of English missionaries as well as Burmese ministers. Many suspected that past chairmen had favoured missionaries against Burmese Methodists. Indeed a sort of benign apartheid had been created in which invisible lines separated British missionaries from Burmese ministers. Missionaries were ‘us’ and Burmese Christians were ‘them’.28 At the same time that U Po Tun became Chairman, the Missionary Society appointed Reed as ‘Missionary Committee Representative’. The position was new although the Committee was old. Missionaries had always discussed their personal matters in the Synod Missionary [ 158 ]

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Committee – stipends, allowances, conditions of service and the like – out of earshot of Burmese colleagues. They suspected (probably wrongly) that the Committee gossiped about them. Suspicions deepened after 1950 when Childe corresponded often with Reed and seldom with U Po Tun. The Burmans wondered whether Reed’s principal role was to keep an eye on U Po Tun. For his part U Po Tun seemed neither to like nor to trust his missionary colleagues. His antipathy dated back to the Japanese occupation, and he had one very specific gripe. Whereas the missionaries had been paid regularly during the war, Burmese ministers had not. The Missionary Society righted this inequity only after much complaining. It was too little and too late. Trouble flared in the very first Synod chaired by U Po Tun in 1951. Florence Cleaver had never attended a more ‘unhappy’ meeting and she accused U Po Tun of having ‘bitterness in his heart’. He had taken ‘sheer delight’, she said, ‘in insulting us as individuals, ridiculing our work’, and ranting ‘against past and present missionary staff’. It was ‘as if he did not want us in the Church at all’. The Burmese ministers had been ‘too afraid to restrain him’ and ‘the male missionaries were too spineless’. Miss Cleaver decided there and then that in the event of serious trouble in Burma she for one would not remain under U Po Tun as head of the Methodist Church.29 Politics in the microcosm had taken a nasty turn. When Synod was over, U Po Tun set sail immediately for England. He was due to attend the Methodist Conference in June 1951 and in September he had been invited to attend a meeting of the Eastern Committee as an observer. Firth, who was back in England, was a member of the Committee. He had placed an item on the agenda which proposed to make a small ex gratia payment to an obscure Burman called U Bo Zoung who had just retired after forty years’ faithful service as clerk and general factotum in the Mandalay Mission House. He had received no pension and no remuneration for his work during the war.30 The amount of money involved was pitifully small and committee members expected to nod it through without discussion. They were taken aback therefore when U Po Tun stood up in the gallery. He was wearing his dark glasses, longyi and gaung-baung and glowered angrily. He vehemently denounced the proposal.31 He was furious because he had not been consulted and he accused the missionaries of failing to understand Burmese people. U Bo Zoung was living proof of the way they gave ‘favours in return for flattery’.32 The meeting was stunned into silence. Childe ushered the apoplectic U Po Tun outside and told him that his behaviour was worse than that of supposedly imperialistic missionaries. Firth put U Po Tun’s outburst down to ‘personal jealousy’.33 What General Aung San had been to [ 159 ]

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the British Government, U Po Tun became to the Methodist Eastern Committee. Older missionaries in Burma had expected that U Po Tun would fall from grace and Childe commiserated with Reed that Burma did not have ‘a ministry of reasonable standards’.34 However, Winston, Bestall and Young would have behaved in exactly the same outraged way if the Eastern Committee had discussed a colleague behind their backs. At the time, another matter was annoying U Po Tun. A woman missionary in Mandalay was openly flouting his authority.35 In any case, U Po Tun knew that his personal position was unassailable, for the political consequences of removing him were unthinkable. The poor man was also suffering from TB and although he summoned up the energy for a few more spats with the church authorities, he retired in 1955 and died in 1963.36 Reed succeeded him as Chairman. He had the unenviable tasks of guiding the Church towards autonomy and finding a suitable Burmese leader to succeed U Po Tun. Relationships between Reed and Childe were always somewhat stormy.37 Reed’s blood pressure rose when he read the text of a speech Childe had delivered to 340 luminaries at the Methodist Layman’s Missionary Movement Dinner in Westminster Central Hall. Childe seemed to imply that the current Civil War was a form of divine retribution for Burmese infidelity.38 Reed was appalled that Childe could pretend to know more ‘about conditions here . . . than we on the spot do’. He pointed out some home truths. Methodists in Upper Burma were loyal to their Government and most Buddhists were well ‘disposed towards Christians’. He warned of the ‘unfortunate repercussions such irresponsible and incorrect statements may have’. Reed was only just getting into his stride – few Burmans, he said, would recognise Childe’s analysis of their country. Most of them thought that ‘we did rather smash up their country’ and that after all it was ‘our war not theirs!’ It was a very important moment. At last a senior Methodist missionary was defending Burma with passion, and representing it as victim rather than villain. Reed’s intervention meant that in future it would be unacceptable, even in private, for church officials to trade colonial-style insults. At last the Methodist Church in Burma had found its political priest.39 Clashes between colonial and postcolonial attitudes were not uncommon. Reed had already criticised what he considered to be inappropriate relationships between Methodist ministers, BOC bosses and their workers in Chauk.40 Florence Cleaver occasionally chastised colleagues for behaving ‘like pre-war missionaries’ and Vincent was [ 160 ]

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a stickler for political correctness. Two senior missionaries discovered this to their cost.41 Holden, now an elder statesman, had published some Burmese translations for the Christian Literature Society. Vincent disapproved. It was ‘unpleasing’ and ‘not natural Burmese’. Little slips of paper had had to be stuck over offending sections. It could have been avoided, Vincent railed, if only ‘Bill had been a little more ready to accept advice from Burmese helpers’.42 Kinchin had gone ‘astray in relations with Khongsai colleagues’. He was ‘too ready to talk’, ‘not ready enough to listen’ and treated ‘people as things rather than persons’. Vincent was never averse to ‘shopping’ a colleague, and he forwarded to Childe an offending letter Kinchin had written to a Burmese official. He commented exasperatedly, if only ‘the Lord had given [Kinchin] something to make his goodness more attractive’! Like a punctilious primary school teacher, Childe scrawled red ink corrections across the letter and sent it back to Kinchin, chastising him in his archest manner. ‘The average white man, even when he is a missionary’, Childe pronounced, has to be careful not to offend ‘national officials’ who have ‘special sensitivities’. Nor did younger missionaries escape the rough edge of Vincent’s tongue. They had suggested that ‘Methodist ways’ were too ‘Western’ and should not be ‘imposed on the Church here’. Vincent accused them of encouraging Burmese ministers to demand ‘an independent pastorate system’ in preference to ‘Methodist itinerancy’.43 Unbeknown to the Methodist missionaries their long-term fate had already been decided. In May 1948 a confidential internal memorandum circulated around government departments. It recited the official position. Everyone in Burma was entitled to ‘freedom of conscience’ and anyone had the right to convert a citizen ‘from his original faith to another faith’. However, two hidden conditions were added which would eventually have serious consequences. First, there was a catchall proviso prohibiting foreign missionaries from engaging in ‘activities detrimental to the interests of Burma’, and second, an injunction that no missionary could enter the country if a suitably qualified Burmese citizen (of the same faith) was available to do the work.44 During the early 1950s the additional criteria were tested in a trio of cases in Kachin State. The first involved the Yunnan Tibetan Christian Mission (YTCM). Two senior YTCM missionaries, Rev. David Rees and Rev. Robert Morse, had inadvertently contravened the 1948 Secret Memorandum. A young couple, both YTCM church members, had committed adultery and eloped. They were caught, and brought for trial before the Toungok (village headman) who ruled that they should separate and return to their respective spouses. The YTCM elders [ 161 ]

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were outraged by the leniency of the punishment. They took the law into their own hands and had the young people publicly flogged. An anonymous informant claimed that Rees and Morse had carried out the flogging. They were duly arrested by the Deputy Commissioner in Myitkyina although the two men denied the charge and were subsequently released.45 The second case, in April 1951, involved the Roman Catholic Mission in Myitkyina. A foreign nun had been appointed to teach in the Mission School.46 The headmistress applied for an entry permit and confirmed that no suitably qualified Burmese citizen was available to do the work. The District Superintendent of Police issued a permit which the District Commissioner immediately rescinded on the grounds that the nun would be unavailable to teach ‘ordinary students’ in the local state high school.47 The third case again involved the YTCM. Four of its missionaries, including Rev. Eugene Morse, had applied for extensions to their work permits.48 At the same time the Mission applied to set up a branch in Sumprabum. The Deputy Commissioner in charge of the case turned down the request because there were already two Christian missions there.49 During the course of investigations it was discovered that nine of the YTCM missionaries were called Morse, and several others were called Rees. The authorities suspected jiggery-pokery and the plot thickened when the Mission applied for an entry permit for yet another missionary to supervise the medical laboratory.50 The District Chief Medical Officer denied the existence of any such medical laboratory in the Mission and the application was turned down.51 The cases served as warnings to missionaries of all denominations. They were all under surveillance and should expect their activities to be curtailed A little naïvely perhaps the Methodist missionaries looked upon U Nu as their best hope. A devout Buddhist, he ostensibly championed religious freedom and seemed to value missionaries.52 If they clutched at straws it was because they needed whatever help they could get, particularly in respect of one tricky little quasi-legal issue. In colonial times marriages in Methodist churches had been legalised under the terms of the Indian Christian Marriages Act. After 1948 it was unclear whether marriages solemnised in Methodist churches in Burma were legally contracted. Virtuous Methodist couples held their breath while urgent clarification on their marital status was sought from the Missionary Society and the Burmese Government.53 Unlike their predecessors, post-war missionaries were unburdened with the baggage of colonialism and were more open-minded.54 Those who had arrived after the worst of the insurgency were also unaware of [ 162 ]

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the grinding awfulness of post-war Burmese politics. Rev. Ivan Homer, for example, had arrived in 1955 when Pakokku was peaceful and the insurgency was a distant inconvenience. He was full of zest.55 By contrast, the morale of Burmese Methodists was very low. They had endured years of uncertainty, fighting and shortages. It was especially the case in Monywa. Once the powerhouse of the District, Monywa had fallen on hard times. ‘Buddhist missionaries and communist myrmidons’ dissuaded Christian children from attending church on Sundays and unsettled everyone else too.56 Many of the 132 members were elderly. Younger members went off to find work in Mandalay or Rangoon. Reed could only visit Monywa once a month and the Methodists felt thoroughly neglected. ‘Evangelistic effort’ in the town had been blunted. The church was inward-looking and lacking in ambition and the Civil War had isolated surrounding villages.57 Two church members were engaged in a bitter legal dispute, and a disgraced minister had upset members of the congregation by turning up unexpectedly.58 Monywa Wesley High School, once so prestigious, was now a shambles. One teacher had died, three had retired and the others showed no interest in Christianity.59 The year 1957 was an annus horribilis. A huge fire swept through Monywa on 6 May. Hundreds of buildings, including the Mission House and the school, went up in flames. People lost their homes, possessions and life savings. Thirty Methodists crammed into the undamaged house of a fellow member. Fortunately the Methodist Relief Fund responded promptly and financed a ‘vigorous rebuilding’ programme. Mercifully insurgent activity had subsided, two men offered for the ministry in 1958 (the first for ten years) and three young people volunteered to teach at Monywa School. Otherwise there was very little to cheer about in the Burmese Area.60 Developments in the Upper Chindwin were much more hopeful. In 1948 Rangoon Radio had reported that 20,000 Lushais had been converted to Buddhism after an evangelistic campaign in the Chin Hills. It was a call to arms for Methodists. They resented Buddhist incursions into the Chin States which they regarded as ‘their territory’, and a little disingenuously perhaps, they attacked the Buddhist campaign for undermining the Government’s attempt to ‘weld the people of Burma into a unity’.61 Synod began emphasising ‘not the likeness between Buddhism and Christianity but the differences’. It insisted that when ‘animist hill people’ turn ‘from their ancestral religion’ they find ‘liberty and joy’ not in Buddhism but in Christianity. The statistics seemed to clinch the argument. While membership in Burmese circuits had remained static during the 1950s, the total number of Methodists in Upper Burma as a [ 163 ]

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whole had increased dramatically. There were 1,874 full members in 1951, 4,042 in 1955 and 6,169 in 1963. The ‘Methodist community’ – that is, the total number of full members, members-on-trial, children in Sunday schools and anyone who had been baptised – showed an even more dramatic increase. It grew from 4,222 in 1951 to 12,513 in 1963. Almost all the increase was in the Upper Chindwin. It was not necessarily due to ‘evangelistic efforts’ for whole communities of Lushai people had migrated into the Kale and Kabaw valleys. At the same time Khongsais had settled in the isolated Somra Tract. Originally the Lushais had been converted by Welsh Presbyterians and the Khongsais by Baptist missionaries.62 Both groups had now joined the Methodist Church en masse. Reed claimed ‘no credit’ for this phenomenon. The Synod Report for 1956 explained that Lushais had come ‘down from the hills in their thousands’ and as a result church membership had increased tenfold.63 Childe was delighted. It provided him with ammunition to use against his critics in the Eastern Committee. ‘There is something very thrilling about this tribal work,’ he wrote in 1953. ‘It would have been ill for this District had not the tribal work been imposed on us.’ The Chins were ‘splendid stock’, as important to the Church in Burma as outcastes were in India.64 Reed had reservations. The Upper Burmese District, like the Burmese Government, struggled to integrate the new towns and villages that were springing up overnight in the Tahan-Tamu area; 6,000 Lushais had already settled there, and a further 50,000 Lushais and 50,000 Hualngos were expected to arrive annually during the next five years. The Government anticipated that 11,000 extra houses would be needed to accommodate them. Already there were 3,500 Methodists in Tahan-Tamu and Reed estimated that the Christian community was set to grow by a further 30,000.65 It was ironic that after so many years spent bemoaning stagnation, the Church now felt threatened by an explosion in its membership. The problem was that the newcomers were unfamiliar with the customs and practices of the Church. They did not understand the Methodist circuit system and demanded precise, written regulations for everything, especially rules governing marriage and divorce.66 Such legalism was alien to the Arminian traditions of Methodism. Reed and his colleagues also found it hard to cope with the more exuberant forms of Lushai worship, especially their practice of dancing uninhibitedly during Wesley hymns.67 The missionaries were torn between accommodating the new Methodists and keeping faith with their old traditions.68 Pastoral arrangements in the Upper Chindwin were stretched to breaking point. The first Khongsai minister was ordained in 1958. [ 164 ]

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There were only four Lushai ministers (two of whom were elderly and one a probationer), and one sixty-year-old minister had to look after an eighty-mile-long Hualgno circuit that contained 2,000 Methodists.69 ‘We are knocking our heads up against a brick wall,’ Reed warned, ‘if we insist that new members observe every aspect of Methodist organisation and discipline.’ He wanted to recruit local preachers capable of serving as part-time stipendiary ministers, but Methodist regulations categorically prohibited the payment of part-time workers. Reed was on furlough in England and he lobbied furiously to get the rule changed. Vincent supported him from Mandalay, protesting that no-one in Burma would ‘lift a finger to help without being paid’.70 Reed appeared before the Eastern Committee to argue his case. He explained that ‘the Lushai Christian community . . . had increased from 1,000 to 6,000 in the last four years’ and that ‘discipline and unity’ would collapse ‘unless the part-time workers scheme was adopted’.71 The Committee was won over and the scheme was approved. When he returned to Burma, Reed set about ensuring that everyone in the Church was ‘familiar with Methodist rules and customs’.72 He launched a major training programme. Missionaries became trainers and everyone from the most experienced minister to the youngest youth leader attended training courses. John Wesley would have been justifiably proud of Reed’s methodical energy. Government regulations became increasingly onerous during the 1950s. It was not unusual for intending Methodist missionaries to have to wait months for entry permits. Many of them gave up and went elsewhere.73 Colonel Middleton-West of BCMS was one of several missionaries forced out of Burma. Missionaries were not alone. Foreign-run organisations faced similar restrictions and many of them closed down and left the country.74 By 1952 pressure began to mount from another direction altogether. In keeping with the times, the British Methodist Conference had appointed a commission to examine the role of ‘the missionary in the overseas church of the future’. In 1953 Conference resolved to relinquish its power over ‘the church in other parts of the world’. In 1954 it followed up the resolution with an examination of the ‘political, social and economic structures’ of the colonies and the challenges posed by ‘nationalism, communism and materialism’.75 Childe suspected the missionaries in Burma of ducking out of this process. He accused them of clinging on to positions ‘which Burmans should now fill’. In 1954 he asked to see Reed’s plans ‘to indigenise the Church’ in Burma.76 Reed had none. The Conference Report was eventually published in 1956. It spoke of a chronic ‘reliance upon the [ 165 ]

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missionary’ in former colonies and of the need to adapt to ‘new environments’.77 Reed explained that Burma was different. It was, he said, entirely the wrong time to hand over to indigenous control. Indeed the work was ‘less difficult and less unpleasant than ever before’. There was a ‘closer feeling of comradeship between the missionary and the indigenous Church worker’. People generally were more friendly. He insisted that a quick handover was the last thing the Upper Burmese Church needed.78 Childe refused to be fobbed off and complained that the Burma missionaries were ‘more reluctant than governments to forego control and to set people free’.79 The Methodist Conference had less altruistic reasons for wishing to withdraw from its overseas commitments. Donations to the Missionary Society had been dwindling for years and the Society urgently needed to reduce its costs.80 For this reason, the Eastern Committee urged the Upper Burma District to amalgamate with the American Methodists. In August 1963 Childe and Miss Anstey were despatched to Burma to persuade both parties to merge.81 Childe ran into trouble. The Upper Burmese Methodists were in no mood to cooperate with him. They blamed him for the long delays in setting up the Burma Property Trust Association. Childe returned home emptyhanded.82 Much to everyone’s surprise, 1960 turned out to be an annus mirabilis. The ‘Methodist community’ reached 10,000 for the first time.83 New members were joining in larger numbers than ever before; 300 had joined in the Tahan Area alone.84 There were more local preachers on circuit plans and bigger congregations;85 200 adults were baptised in the Somra Area. Children often dragged their parents along to be baptised and there were many ‘spectacular examples of conversions’. As membership figures rose, so too did demands for ‘autonomy’.86 The growing confidence in the Chin Church was not matched in Mandalay where Lushais outnumbered Burmans.87 A mood of despondency descended upon the Burmese Church. The vast majority of delegates at the 1960 Synod were Lushais and Khongsais.88 Leading Burmans were growing older and several had retired. Only two new Burmese local preachers and fifteen Burmese members had joined the Church in 1957. Just three Christian marriages were solemnised in the Burmese Area and there had been ‘no new Burmese candidates’ for the ministry since 1948.89 Chin ministers sometimes complained about the supercilious attitude of Burman ministers. Bishop was not alone in thinking that the Burmese Methodist Church was too small and too divided for autonomy.90 In some respects Burman Methodists now felt more threatened by [ 166 ]

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the Chin revival than by Buddhist pongyis. Childe complained that the missionaries had devoted too much time to Burmese work and not enough on ‘tribal work’. Reed, always a great champion of the Burmans, pointed out that the Mandalay circuit was the most advanced in the District and had produced the most outstanding church leaders.91 He reminded Childe that in the past Buddhist Burmans had never responded in large numbers to Christianity.92 The division of the District into the Burmese, Tahan and Somra areas served to underline the increasing Chin domination of Burmese Methodism. Each area now had its own council and business was conducted in the ‘local’ language.93 The Tahan Area was dynamic and the Khongsais were not far behind (although they lacked confidence). By comparison the Burmese Area was moribund. In recognition of Chin hegemony, Synod was held in Tahan in 1960 rather than in Mandalay. It took all Reed’s diplomatic skills to head off demands for Lushai secession. The 1960 Synod was a seminal moment in the Mission’s history. For the first time ‘autonomy’ was debated seriously, and from now on Rev. Leslie Cowell became a key player.94 All church-owned property had now been transferred into the Local Trust Association and glowing reports of autonomy were received from the Sierra Leone Methodist District. A few delegates were reluctant to break away from ‘the Methodist Church in England’, but most agreed that the Church in Burma must be independent of any outside body and ‘must be allowed to speak for itself’. A Transfer of Authority Standing Committee was duly established.95 Many important issues were addressed in the 1960 Synod. Vincent emphasised ‘the social aspects’ of the work, Khongsai delegates from the Somra Area bemoaned their lack of leadership, and there was a long discussion on the difficulties of maintaining Christian standards ‘in business and at work’ in modern Burma. The most ferocious debate was reserved for the future role of missionaries. Vincent was certain that Burmese Methodists would want the missionaries to continue ‘as colleagues and fellow workers’. Not everyone agreed. Some wanted the missionaries to leave immediately and others complained that the missionaries treated the ‘natives’ unequally or that they were too susceptible to flattery.96 The behaviour of Burmese Methodists raised other concerns. Shortages of food and consumer goods had forced most of them to buy black-market goods, but ‘the traffic of opium’ was deplored and Methodists were urged not to become involved in any form of drugs smuggling.97 The seventy-fifth anniversary of the District was celebrated in 1961. Most of the delegates were Lushais. Very few Burmans were present [ 167 ]

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and the Khongsais seemed keener to become government ministers than Methodist ministers. A young Burman minister was stationed in the Somra because there were no suitable Khongsai candidates.98 However, membership and baptism figures were still rising and the Lushais were beginning to understand the circuit system.99 Methodists in Upper Burma had gained a reputation for their innovative social projects. Transistor radios were used to evangelise remote villages. New treatments had been developed in the Leprosy Home.100 A missionary’s wife, Sandy Blakeway-Smith, had started a deaf school in Kyaukse and the Methodist Dispensary in Maingdaungphai was at the forefront of the battle against trachoma and TB.101 The Church had helped Somra farmers after floods and Tahan townsfolk after a fire, and many young people were volunteering ‘for Christian social service’.102 Everyone was being trained for something – local preachers in Mandalay, part-time pastors in Maingdaungphai, evangelists in Tahan, women-workers in Hualngo, ministers in Mandalay and Tahan, and voluntary workers everywhere.103 The Methodist Church was ready to grasp autonomy and to play its full part in the new Burma.

Notes 1 2 3

4 5

6

7 8

9

SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 12 June 1942. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 24 May 1945. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN4/Chapman–Rattenbury, 25 April 1945. Dr Maurice Jamaldin, Medical Director of the Leper Home; son of a Muslim father (who disowned him when he converted) and Chin mother; educated Monywa High School 1930 and Rangoon University Medical School; worked in a dispensary in the north during the war; Medical Director at Mandalay Leper Home. His daughter and sons (including Dr Khin Maung Than, a distinguished physician) are backbones of the Methodist Church in Mandalay today. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/4/Synod Missionary Committee Minutes, 10 January 1946. See SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/4/Synod Representative Session, 17 January 1946; Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6D/Folder-23(f), December 1946; Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod Missionary Meeting Letter, 18 January 1947; and Missionary Meeting Minutes, 15 January 1949. ‘Dearness allowances’ (per month) were: Ministers Rs 60, Agents Rs 50, Bible Women Rs 30, children Rs 2. U Hla Pe had defended Burmese and Chinese Christians in Yesagyo where a Lushai pastor and several church members were killed; he converted U Po Wine (a village bully who became a stalwart of the Church). U Hla Pe had the advantage of not being attached to any particular faction. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6D/Folder-24, Firth–Ellingworth, 27 April 1971. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 4, Rattenbury–Firth, 23 November 1945. The five main priorities were: repairing war-damage; reopening the Leper Home; resolving Christian marriage law; cooperating with other denominations; and reopening mission schools, but not handing over to Burmans. Ma Pu Lay; thirty-three years old in 1946; married Maung Ba Ohn’s brother; d. 2007 aged ninety-four; her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are

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13 14

15 16 17 18

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20 21 22

23 24 25

Methodists in Mandalay today. The continuing students were Maung Thaung Sein and Mya Than Nyunt. New students were Maung Ba Ohn and Ma Pu Lay, who had just started, and Ma Tin Myint and Phaia started the following year. Tung Za Vung (a pre-war student) returned for his final year. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod General Letter, 17 January 1948 and 15 January 1949. The plan was to convert the pre-war SPG Mandalay Queen Alexander’s Hospital for Children and Women. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod Minutes, 18 January 1948, and Synod Missionaries Meeting Letter, 17 January 1948. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod Minutes, 18 January 1947. The list incuded the churches at Hmangyo and Myobaw, schools at Thetkegyin and Lezin, preachers’ houses at Shwegyaung, Mawlaik and two in Chauk, new churches in three Lushai villages, dispensaries in Lonpo, Tahan and Aungban. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod General Letter, 17 January 1947. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod General Letter, 17 January 1948. The school in Shwechaung (near Pakokku) was given to a teacher in lieu of pension after fifty years’ service. The sale of Aungban School (near Kalaw) paid for a new church hall in Kalaw. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Firth–Childe, 24 April 1949. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Childe–Reed, 10 February 1950. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Reed–Childe, 28 February 1950. Reed often wrote to the British press complaining about their coverage of Burma. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6C, General Letter from Synod, 1949, and Synod Minutes, January 1951. The Trust became necessary because of the decision to use the sale of the Old Wesley Boys High School, the Principal’s house and Bellevue (donated by Mrs West in the 1930s) for the upkeep of the church buildings. Today the Trust includes the Wesley Boys and Girls High School sites. See also Folder14(c-d), address by Reed to the Eastern Committee, 1966. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod Representative Session Minutes, 18 January 1947. Only 332 of the full members, and only 12 of the 76 adult baptisms were in the Burmese circuits (Mandalay, Monywa, Pakokku, Chauk, Kyaukse and Pyawbwe), the remaining 64 were in the Lushai and Khongsai circuits. By 1949 it was estimated that 10 per cent of Khongsais were Methodists, and less than a third of the 1,221 full members in Upper Burma were in the Burmese Area. In 1951 there were 425, and in 1955, 417. SOAS/MMS/Correspondence/FBN3/Shepherd–Rattenbury, 23 June 1944. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod Minutes, 18 January 1949. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod Representative Session Minutes, 18 January 1947; Women’s Work Reports for Kyaukse and Pakokku, 1947; and Mandalay Circuit Report, 1947. Daw Aye Zin rode around on a bicycle and sidecar. She complained that Buddhist children ‘are quite unused to discipline and they quarrel even while I am teaching’. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Women’s Work Monywa Circuit Report, 1947. See MNA/Yangon/Daily Intelligence Summary/Rangoon Police, 3 July 1947, and SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod Minutes, 17 January 1948. Note that the Burma District consisted of Mandalay, Monywa, Pakokku, Kyaukse, Chauk and Pyawbwe. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50, Synod Minutes, 18 January 1948 suggests that the decline in Burmese membership was partly because eighty members had been removed for unsatisfactory conduct. See also SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod Minutes, 14 January 1949 which indicates that the full membership of 1,221 included 366 Burmese and 855 Chins; 157 of the 329 members ‘on trial’ were Chins. Only 28 of 149 adults baptised were Burmese. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Childe-Vincent, 29 April 1955 shows that in 1963 there were 579 full members in the Burmese Area – an increase of 162 in twelve years. Most of the additional numbers were Chins.

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28

29 30

31 32 33 34 35 36

37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44

45

46 47

SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6A/Folder-1(d), Burma District Report, 1956–57. David Forgacs (ed.), A Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916–1935, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1988, p. 197; Gramsci defines subaltern classes as those ‘who want to educate themselves in the art of government’. Mission ‘subalterns’ included Sadhu Sundar Singh, N.V. Tilak and V.S. Azariah in India, Apolo Kivebulaya in Uganda, Dr Aggrey in the Gold Coast and ‘Prophet’ Harris in the Ivory Coast. A missionary committing a misdemeanour was privately chastised by the Chairman, while Burmese ministers had to appear before special Synod committees and were publicly humiliated – including Revs U Khant, U Pai Bwin and U Po Tun. Note also that Rattenbury, Childe, Goudie and Noble had all been senior missionaries. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Cleaver–Ladley (MMS WW Secretary), 28 February 1951. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Firth, Memo, 5 September 1951. U Bo Zoung had also helped at the Leprosy Hospital and kept accounts of the Mandalay Girls High School; on 11 April 1942 he was the last to leave, waved Chapman and colleagues goodbye and locked up Mission House. A longyi is a sarong worn by men, and a gaung-baung is a Burmese turban. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued, Childe–Reed, 25 September 1951. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Memo/Firth–Childe, 21 September 1951. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Childe–Reed, 25 September 1951. On 14 August 1951 Varney had suspected U Po Tun of financial mismanagement. Miss Robertson refused to leave Mandalay when U Po Tun stationed her to Pakokku. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, U Po Tun–Childe, 26 August 1963, and Burma District Synod Minutes, 27 November 1963. He complained that a limitation of five years was proposed for the District Chairman in Burma when there was no limitation in England. U Po Tun had entered the ministry in 1916. In 1929 he became Superintendent of the Mandalay circuit. He took part in the seventy-fifth anniversary celebrations of Wesley Church Mandalay. He died on 25 July 1963, aged seventy-five years, leaving a wife, Daw Aye Mai, and two sons. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Reed–Childe, December 1953. Reed was dismissive of Childe’s bureaucratic language, writing on one occasion, ‘Your paragraphs on the new medical grants are exceedingly funny when read aloud . . . but they were not intended to be funny.’ He was furious when Childe accused him of failing to obtain a re-entry visa for Holden. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Childe–Reed, 28 February 1950. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Reed–Childe, 25 March 1950. See Chapter 3. Vincent returned from England because Reed felt there was no-one able to do the job in Burma. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Vincent–Childe, 2 February 1955. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Childe–Kinchin, undated, and Vincent–Childe, 2 February 1955, also Vincent–Childe, 1 July 1955. See MNA/File 16/Accession-27/1/11/Box 1, ‘Policy of the Union Government in regard to foreign religious missions in Burma’, 18 May 1948, and Foreign Office/ Rangoon/Confidential Memorandum, no. 118FMD48: signed by Tha Din, Deputy Secretary. MNA/Yangon/Religious Affairs: Missionaries/3/1718/1951/2A-9/Box 52, Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Myitkyina General Department, No. 2A-9, and Memo, 2281/1M, 20 October 1950, Assistant Resident Putao to Deputy Commissioner Myitkyina. Rees and Morse defended the punishment saying that ‘the boy and the girl underwent disciplining under no coercion – standing in public and receiving, the boy twenty-five strokes, and the girl, fifteen on her hands’. The nun was Sister Mary Gabrielle Perboyre. MNA/Yangon/Religious Affairs: Missionaries/3/1718/1951/2A-9/Box 52, Office

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52 53 54

55 56

57 58 59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70

71 72

of the Deputy Commissioner, Myitkyina General Department, No. 2A-9, No. 76K A/1951, Ministry Kachin State. MNA/Yangon/Religious Affairs: Missionaries/3/1718/1951/2A-9/Box 52/No. 76K A/1951, Ministry Kachin State. The others were Howard and Lois Morse and Mrs Wagner. The Deputy Commissioner of Myitkyina, Tun Yin, was in charge of the case. MNA/Yangon/Religious Affairs: Missionaries/3/1718/1951/2A-9/Box 52, 22 June 1951. The YTCM missionaries were Mr Eugene Morse, Mrs Helen Morse, Master D. Morse, Mr R.H. Morse, Mrs B. Morse, Mr J.R. Morse, Mrs G.H. Morse, Mr R. La Verne Morse, Miss Angie Ruth Morse, Miss De Ya-Lan Morse, Miss Dorothy Sterling and David Mark Sterling. The new missionary was Miss Sterling. MNA/Yangon/Religious Affairs: Missionaries/3/1718/1951/2A-9/Box 52/DC Myitkyina to J. Raphael, Secretary to Kachin State and Chief Medical Officer, Kachin State, 1 August, 10 August, 24 August, 28 August and 20 September 1951, No. 76K(A)/51. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 6A/Folder-1(d), Mandalay Leper Home Report for 1950. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod General Letter, 17 January 1948. Revs Clifford Jones, Derek Broxholme and Leslie Cowell (1951), David Turtle (1953), Ivan Homer (1955), Claude Nurse, Edward Bishop (1956), Ivor Mann (1960) and David Blakeway-Smith (1962) had arrived. The wife of one new missionary was neither a Methodist nor a professing Christian (see SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/ Temporary File/Reed–Childe, 16 August 1962). Rev. Ivan Homer, Interview, 2007; Homer recalled that by this time pilot engines packed with government troops were being sent ahead of trains in order to prevent insurgent attacks on the Mandalay–Rangoon railway. See Carl Clemen, ‘Missionary Activity in the Non-Christian Religions,’ Journal of Religion, 10:1 (1930), and SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/T300: Synod Letter, 1963; Monywa Women’s Work Report, 1957, ‘People do not feel they could depend on [government schools and hospitals] as they could on Christian schools and hospitals.’ SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Monywa Circuit Report, 1957. By 1957 Methodists in Lezin made no ‘attempt to meet, sing, pray or read the Bible’. The minister had left his wife (a teacher at Monywa School) and son, later marrying bigamously. A Christian teacher from a government school agreed to become the headmistress. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/T300/Monywa Circuit Report, and Women’s Work in Monywa Report, 1957. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod Minutes, 17 January 1948. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170/Synod Minutes, January 1956. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170/Burma District Report, 1954. The Hualngo people had been asking to join the Methodist Church for years. The 1953 Synod agreed, adding 790 full members and 1,590 members-on-trial at a stroke. The Hualngos came from the Baptist Church in the Chin Hills. They spoke Lushai, and were closer to the Lushai Church in Assam than the Lushai Church in Tahan. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Childe–‘Basil’, 17 January 1953. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Reed–Childe, 31 March 1954. They came from Baptist and Presbyterian Churches. Vincent disagreed with the Lushai minister, Tuahranga, about dancing. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170/Burma District Report, 1954. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Reed–Childe, 31 March 1954. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Reed–Childe, 7 September and 17 September 1954; and Vincent–Childe, 1 July 1955. Leslie Newbiggin and Stephen Neill both advocated similar solutions in Africa. The regulations were specified in Constitution, Practice and Discipline of the Methodist Church. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Childe–Vincent, 29 April 1955. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Reed–Childe, 7 September 1954.

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81

82 83 84 85

86

87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Jones–Childe, 14 March 1961. Rev. Gerald Burt and Dr Way did not arrive. Rev. and Mrs Blakeway Smith and Rev. Clifford Jones endured ‘a wild half hour with the Special Investigation Branch’. They asked about Smith’s education from ‘kindergarten up until the present’ and ‘particulars of his father and mother’. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Vincent–Childe, 18 April and 8 June 1955. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Childe–Synod, 17 November 1954. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Childe–Synod Missionary Meeting, 17 November 1954. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Childe–Synod Missionary Meeting, 15 November 1956. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Synod Missionary Committee– Childe, December 1956. The view was confirmed by Burmese Methodists in Mandalay, January 2007. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Childe–Synod, 17 November 1959. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Childe–Synod, 17 November 1954. ‘JMA [Junior Missionary Association] raises £180,000 every year in pennies . . . Over 40 million pennies every year’. It was important to make overseas churches self-sufficient. See SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Letter, Rev. Rex Kissack to Rev. R.C. Howard, 13 May 1963. ‘American Methodist Cooperation with other Christian Groups in Burma’, 26 June 1963. Record of Conversations between Representatives of British and American Methodists, 5 August 1963. A Comparative Statement: The Methodist Churches in Burma, 5 August 1963. Record of Conversations in Mandalay between the Upper Burma and Lower Burma Methodists, 20–22 August 1963. MMS agenda until 1966 (see SOAS/MMS/Reed–Pile, 9 March 1966). The problem was that the Upper Burmese Church was Lushai and the Lower Burmese Church was Chinese. Childe was disappointed to discover that the American Methodists had joined the ‘Methodist Church of Southeast Asia’. Homer, Interview, 2007. The ‘Methodist community’ rose from 8,974 to 10,214 with 197 adult baptisms. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Tahan Area Report, 1960. Lushai immigration had declined and sects such as Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Presbyterians had grown. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Burma Area Report, 1960. The Tahan Training Institution trained thirty-four local preachers and forty people joined a Youth Leaders’ course in March 1960. Forty-four men and women from fifteen churches in the North and South Hualngo circuits joined a leadership course. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Burma District Reports, 1958 and 1960. Not for the first time a motorboat was commissioned for the Somra, to ‘enable more frequent visits to riverside villages’. The West Midlands District Boys’ Brigade raised the money (letter dated 14 October 1960). It was reminiscent of the Hilda episode in 1913 (see pp. 84–85). SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File; e.g. December 1953, Minutes of the Synod Pastoral Session noted that thirty-two of the thirty-seven new members in Maymyo were Chin soldiers. In Kyaukse, five Kachin soldiers had been baptised. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Synod–Childe, January 1962. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Synod–Childe, 28 October 1957. See Rev. Edward A. Bishop, ‘Leaving Burma for Good: The Last Years of the Missionaries’: ‘Unfinished Task’: Notes and Sermons, 1961–62, and, pp. 126–128 Journal, Monywa, 20 April 1964, pp. 13–14. (Hereafter Bishop, Journal.) SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Childe–‘Dear Basil’, 17 January 1953. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/T170, Burma District Report, 1954. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Burma District Report, 1960. Rev. Leslie Cowell b. Chadwell Heath to Methodist parents 1924; educated at Leyton Boys’ High School and St Catherine’s College Cambridge; Royal Navy

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96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103

during war; trained at Wesley House, Cambridge and served in Tahan (1952–66); fluent Burmese Lushai speaker with a fine sense of humour, Cowell trained Lushai ministers and drafted the Constitution for Church of Upper Burma. He married Margaret Bastin (1926–2010), a Women’s Work missionary and daughter of Methodist missionaries in Hong Kong; she was educated at Trinity Hall School and Middlesex hospital (midwifery and nursing). A fluent Lushai speaker, she trained midwives at Tahan hospital. Later they were stationed in Cambridgeshire, Ipswich and Leeds. Their three daughters were born in Mandalay; d. 2009. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Synod Missionaries Committee– Childe, January 1960. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Synod Pastoral Session, December 1960. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Synod Representative Session, December 1960. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Synod 1961, Minutes. The Tahan Area membership increased by 92 and the Christian community by 500 in a year. The Physiotherapy Department was innovative, pioneering special sandals for foot deformities. Maingdaungphai was the centre of Methodist activity in the Somra. There were 20,020 attendances in the dispensary in 1961, 4,449 of them new patients. A new missionary maternity nurse had arrived. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Burma District Report, 1961. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Burma District Report, 1963.

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Final act

General Ne Win was ruthlessly radical in 1962 (figure 12). He abandoned the constitution, dissolved Parliament, suspended the Supreme Court and ruled arbitrarily through a Revolutionary Council of eighteen senior army officers. U Nu was placed under house arrest where he remained until 1966 complaining all the while about General Ne Win’s usurpation. There were few protests in Burma and fewer still in the West.1 The Revolutionary Council controlled public transport and education; 129 private schools, including Wesley High School Monywa, were nationalised and all pupils were required to follow the same cheerlessly instrumental curriculum consisting of agricultural and vocational subjects. Army officers took over the Burma Economic Development Corporation, State Agriculture Marketing Board and the State Timber Board. The press was censored, the civil service regulated and a single national party was established.2 Privately owned enterprises and overseas conglomerates were nationalised. Major foreign aid programmes were cancelled.3 Paddy prices and agricultural land sales were controlled centrally. This rigid command economy (euphemistically known as the ‘Burmese Way to Socialism’) caused catastrophic increases in agricultural prices and endemic shortages of consumer goods, and created a flourishing black market. Production declined, foreign exchange dried up, workers were forced to work extra hours without pay and students had to do ‘voluntary’ service.4 Rev. Edward Bishop kept a diary in 1964 as Burma crumpled under military rule. His account has the grainy authenticity of a Pathé newsreel as he recorded the impact of government policies on everyday life and ordinary people in Monywa.5 U Khin Maung Tin, for example, was a Methodist businessman. He owned a successful ice-making factory in Monywa until government officials cut off his supplies and closed the [ 174 ]

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12

General Ne Win in January 1966.

factory. They insisted that he continued to pay his workers. It made no sense. He had no income, and went bust. U Khin Maung Tin was no different from thousands of other small businessmen who were similarly afflicted. Word got around Monywa in March 1964 that shops were about to be nationalised. It prompted a wave of panic buying. In Chopra’s Department Store soldiers had been opening ‘vacuum packed tins of tennis balls to see what was inside’ and Bishop suspected that they would soon be opening ‘tins of meat to see if there is meat in them’. In Monywa goods flew from the shelves and soldiers searched shop assistants for no apparent reason. Only ‘Burco tinned stew’ was obtainable, 3-Rams torch batteries cost the earth and razor blades were like gold dust. One day the State took over all the timber merchants in Monywa and there were rumours that the Carlton Cinema was about to go the same way. [ 175 ]

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The axe fell heavily in April 1964. All the big stores in Monywa selling foreign goods were nationalised – Aung Brothers, Tin Aung, Sein Mya Stores and Khit Me – as well as 147 smaller shops. Soldiers checked the stock and then seized everything, including the homes, furniture and belongings of the shopkeepers.6 Small market stalls were next to go. Many of the stallholders were elderly and illiterate. The mother of Ma Thein Mya (another Methodist) was a market trader. She was ordered to fill in long, complicated forms and to buy stock at exorbitant prices from government suppliers. Like many other traders, she gave up. Rev. Ivan Homer described similar scenes in Kyaukse in April 1964:7 We heard a lot of commotion in the market place [as] a large number of troops [were] stationed at each of the four corners, and then more troops started going round the shops. At that time practically all the shops were owned by Indians . . . part of the noise we heard was when the troops began hammering down all the signboards that were over the stores declaring the name of the store or the name of the storeowner. They had brought with them notice boards that said, ‘People’s Store Number . . . Soon every store around the market square had an identical notice board above it declaring what number store it was, and that it belonged to the people . . . so called! It was very hard on the Indian storekeepers. There was no compensation and they just lost everything.8

Everyone was short of cash. Bishop himself had only K.200 to last him the whole of June 1964. He also faced an income tax bill of K.800, so he reduced the housemaid’s salary and sold off his personal items including the children’s toys.9 An infuriating incident illustrated the complications of everyday life. In December 1963 the Monywa Circuit Land Rover was involved in an accident which resulted in protracted court proceedings.10 The case was eventually settled in May 1964, but the Land Rover remained out of action for another year because it was impossible to get parts. Local suppliers had been nationalised, so Bishop had to go to the People’s Stores Corporation in Rangoon. He queued for hours in a chaotic and sweaty government office for a ‘permit to buy’. When he got to the counter he was told he needed the vehicle registration book. He had left it in Monywa. He gave up and bought the parts on the black market.11 Even foreign policy impinged on daily life. ‘Diplomatic neutrality’ had cost Burma dear. The consequence of the ‘decolonising’ treaties with Britain had forced the country into disastrous barter arrangements with China and the Soviet Union. They were now the sole purchasers of Burmese rice and the only providers of loans.12 There was a general sense of insecurity in Burma. U Nu had warned in a speech in 1960 that [ 176 ]

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when ‘the lamb [Burma] lies down with the lion [China]’ it must ‘make sure it is outside and not inside it’.13 Civil society in Upper Burma was a shambles. People in Monywa detested local politicians. They were interested only in pleasing ‘big men’ in Rangoon.14 There was a whiff of corruption. The Revolutionary Council alienated Buddhist leaders when it tried to impose its own moral code.15 Angry clashes occurred between soldiers and pongyis in Mandalay. ‘Dissident monks from the Anisikan Monastery’ disrupted mail deliveries and in August 1964 printing presses were smashed by ‘high ranking police and army officers’ disguised in civilian clothes and pongyis’ robes.16 Censors, informers and General Ne Win’s ‘generation of “yes” men’ insinuated themselves everywhere.17 The missionaries had to take care what they said and to whom. Bishop rashly criticised government treatment of foreigners in a letter home. He was reminded that such forthrightness could land him in prison. In future he avoided leaving even telltale imprints on the backs of air-letter forms. Being Bishop, he could not resist an occasional dig. Once he asked if the censor had followed up an earlier complaint, and in his last letter home in March 1965 he thanked the censor ‘for his patience’.18 The press had been relatively free under U Nu, but after 1962 newspapers were heavily censored.19 The Nation was the last independent newspaper in Burma. Bishop called it ‘a breath of fresh air’. Its editorial integrity meant that it was starved of funds. It was finally shut down in May 1964. Bishop was incensed by the ‘sick-making’ Guardian, which sold ‘its birthright for government advertisements’. All newspapers in Burma were nationalised in September 1964. They became little more than purveyors of Ministry of Information propaganda.20 Half a million Indians lived in Burma in 1960. They had already suffered under the Nationality Laws of the 1950s. Now they were further discriminated against by Ne Win’s Burmanisation programme. Foreigners were not allowed to own land, hold certain jobs or remit funds abroad. Foreign physicians were prevented from practising and foreigners could not hold licences for bars, shops, taxicabs or pavement stalls. Each week in 1963, an average of 2,500 Indians left Burma by air or on refugee ships. Some walked to India across the border. About 100,000 ‘destitute Indian nationals’ had been repatriated by September 1964.21 Burmanisation was a euphemism for xenophobia. Bishop witnessed it at first hand. His friend, Dr Dutta, was a popular Indian physician who had worked at the Government Hospital in Monywa for many years. When he lost his job because of the Burmanisation programme he opened a private medical centre where he provided an excellent service [ 177 ]

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to the local community. On 2 April 1964 Bishop and Dutta happened to board the same train from Monywa to Mandalay. A crowd had gathered to wave Dutta off at the station. He was leaving ‘for good’. Four days later, on 6 April 1964, an article appeared in the Nation newspaper accusing Dutta of cutting-and-running after fleecing patients in the Monywa Central Medical Hall. Bishop was disgusted by this ‘nasty and untrue’ slander which proved that anything unpleasant ‘about foreigners will be believed’.22 The 300,000 ethnic Chinese in Burma fared little better. They were compromised by the activities of the Burmese and Chinese Communist Parties. Two hundred Chinese workers were dismissed from a shoe factory in June 1962. The Bank of China and the Bank of Communications were both nationalised. Maoist ideology was prohibited in Chinese-run schools and leaflets were confiscated from the New China News Agency in August 1963. Eventually communist rebels were offered an amnesty on condition that China severed its ties with the Burmese Communist Party.23 In 1964 teachers at the Ford and Asian Foundations were expelled and the Fulbright, British Council, American Peace Corps, British Information Service and USIS projects were all suspended. In the same year an American-financed highway project was scrapped and Steel Brothers, East Asiatic Burma Oil, Oppenheimers, Anglo-Burmese Tin and General Exploration Company were nationalised.24 The Revolutionary Council banned foreign-run libraries, nationalised foreign-run hospitals, prohibited American films and excluded tourists. Several missionaries were expelled. Burma had become a closed country, and it fascinated Western commentators.25 The Working People’s Daily reported that 9,986 foreigners had left Burma during the first six months of 1964.26 One day, Homer heard that the belongings of ABM missionaries were stacked on the docks in Rangoon and that they were about to leave. Seven Roman Catholic brothers were expelled, and the Rev. Johnson (an Anglican missionary) was said to have been arrested for criticising the nationalisation programme. In March 1964 the children of foreigners as well as the adults were required to register. It was an expensive business, for each registered foreigner was charged K.12.50 per month in tax. A few Westerners opted for Burmese citizenship. A British Methodist nurse, Ruth Khin Thein, married the physiotherapist at Mandalay Leprosy Hospital and stayed in Burma until just before her death in 1995.27 Russian apparatchiks and their families stood out like sore thumbs.28 It was the height of the cold war, and the Soviets were regarded as archenemies. The missionaries disliked them intensely. Lillian Cooke, an Anglican missionary, gleefully recounted a conversation about Russian [ 178 ]

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customers she had overheard between two Burmese shop assistants in Rowe’s department store. ‘They are just like all Europeans,’ said one, to which the other replied, ‘But they stink, because they never change their clothes.’29 On 19 May 1964 Reed went to the bank and discovered that all Methodist assets had been frozen. K.100 and K.50 notes were no longer legal tender. Demonetarisation caused major headaches. High-value notes had to be handed in within five days. The Government promised that they could be exchanged for lower-denomination notes at an unspecified future date. Homer had only one high-value note which he surrendered before leaving Burma. He gave the receipt to U Chit Maung, a member of the Kyaukse Church. Homer never discovered whether he had managed to exchange it for lower-denomination notes.30 In Monywa Bishop laboriously listed the serial numbers of all the K.100 and K.50 notes deposited in the church safe. They totted up to a total of K.1,800. He took the notes to the municipal offices where crowds of people pushed and jostled. After a long time he gave up and went to another office where there were ten clerks on duty and only one customer. Six months later, when it was announced that receipts could be cashed in, Bishop went back to the Municipal Office where he queued again for two hours. He was ninety-fifth in a disorderly queue, so he gave up and went home. No doubt many other people did the same thing.31 As usual, rumours flew around. A woman in Rangoon reputedly handed in half a million kyats in K.100 and K.50 notes. A merchant in Monywa was said to have ‘driven a jeep loaded with boxes of notes to a note-changing centre’ and someone else had handed in piles of jewellery to the Indian Embassy. Someone said that the Government had acquired an X-ray machine to scan people for concealed jewellery at the airport. In mock horror Bishop asked, ‘Can you imagine’ that people could be ‘so dishonest as to try to take jewellery from this country’?32 One very serious consequence of demonetarisation was that the Methodist schools became desperately short of funds. After nationalisation shopkeepers and market traders in Monywa were paid pittances to work in the shops they had previously owned. They could not afford school fees and consequently Monywa High School was unable to pay the teachers’ salaries. The teachers turned up on 1 June 1964 expecting to be paid and to draw money from their savings accounts (a sort of pension fund into which they had contributed monthly). However, K.9,000 had evaporated into thin air. Monywa High School was down to its last K.100, and in desperation Bishop drew out the remaining K.245 from the Monywa Church’s post office account. There were only [ 179 ]

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fifteen children in the top three classes and their fees (even if they could be collected) would total only K.166. The monthly teachers’ salary-bill alone was K.600. The sums just didn’t add up. Unless fees were paid immediately and unless many more pupils enrolled, neither salaries nor pensions could be paid. The school faced bankruptcy. Bishop felt great sympathy for the headmistress of a Roman Catholic school who had been arrested for paying her teachers in the old illegal demonetarised notes.33 In the midst of these difficulties, the Government put pressure on the missionaries to leave Burma. Immigration officials snooped on Bishop. They asked U Tun Shein, headmaster of Monywa School, ‘whether someone else couldn’t do his [Bishop’s] work’.34 Meanwhile, in the Upper Chindwin, Rev. and Mrs Turtle and the Misses Musgrave and Pengelly were stranded because of a government order that prohibited foreigners from travelling without special permission.35 Exit visas had to be obtained from local Security and Administrative Committees (SACs) which had no idea what they were doing. Because so many passengers were caught up in this bureaucratic quagmire, SS Warwickshire left Rangoon almost empty in April 1964. On the other hand, Homer, Turtle, Mona Pengelly, Nurse and Vincent got their visas and returned to Britain.36 Yet another regulation was issued in April 1964. It stated that all religious institutions had to register with the SAC, and they were no longer permitted to engage in educational or medical work. Bishop tried to find out where and how the churches in his circuit had to register, but no one seemed to know. The regulation applied to Buddhist monasteries as well as to Christian churches and Muslim mosques. Senior pongyis mounted vigorous protests, which prompted the Revolutionary Council to retreat. Confusingly, it explained that the regulation applied only to ‘religious associations’ involved in ‘political activities’.37 By April 1964 Bishop was the last ‘front-line’ Methodist missionary in Upper Burma and the last European of any sort in Monywa.38 Barbara Bishop had returned to Britain with their children in February. Bishop discovered only by accident that his colleague, Rev. Broxholme, from the neighbouring circuit, had also returned to Britain.39 In its heyday the Monywa circuit had three ministers and a Women’s Work missionary. Now Bishop was alone. Rev. Pai Bwin had died in March 1964, and another old stalwart, Joseph Ba Chit, had been jailed for ‘disagreeing’! Bishop had to seek special permission from the SAC before visiting other churches in his circuit, the youth group ‘messed around’ and children in the Bailey Hostel in Mandalay were on ‘hunger strike’ because the warden had sworn at them. Life was generally difficult. [ 180 ]

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On the bright side, Bishop set himself the target of filling the church in Monywa. On Easter Sunday 1964 the congregation was standing in the aisles. It was a remarkable turnaround for a church whose members had previously been counted in ones and twos.40 Two factors made the difference. First, Buddhist and Methodist Burmans were united in a fellowship of misery, moaning together about the pernicious home-grown empire ruling over them. The second factor was Bishop himself. He was an inspiring, cheeky-chap sort of leader who rolled up his sleeves and got things done – and he was about to embark on an extraordinary marketing campaign.41 While cinema audiences the world over queued for their Pepsis and popcorn, in August 1964 sweltering film-buffs at screenings of Ben Hur in the Monywa Carlton Cinema scrambled for cold drinks and Bibleportions served by Bishop’s youth group. Patients at Queen Alexandra’s Hospital provided the Methodists with another captive audience, and prisoners in Monywa gaol were even more captive. Bishop preached there every Sunday afternoon and persuaded hard-bitten old lags to fill in ‘decision cards’ and buy Gospel-portions. On Sunday evenings he preached at ‘State High School Number One’ where pupils filled in yet more ‘decision cards’. During the week Bishop handed out leaflets to passers-by and on Sunday mornings he and Daw Ngwe Wint frogmarched unsuspecting youths from football matches into church services. The Methodist guitar-band played outside the Hain Hoe Store in Monywa and youngsters from the church dispensed tea and sympathy here, there and everywhere. At a pwe (festival) in Mohnyin, merrymakers pinned scripture-portions onto trees as good luck offerings, and pongyis bought up stacks of Gospel-portions for dubious but undisclosed purposes. Bishop touted scripture-portions outside the house of Bo Gyi Kaptuna, chairman of the SAC. On Christmas Day 1964 he toured Monywa on a lorry with a loudspeaker selling hundreds more scripture-portions. No wonder the Monywa Church was full.42 Methodists living in remote jungle villages were among the fortunate few to escape Bishop’s ministrations. U Sein Nyunt lived in the back of beyond and had not seen a Christian minister for seventeen years, and the family of Maung Hla in the forestry service had not attended a single Christian service for a similar time.43 In December 1963 Synod took several important decisions. It decided not to join with Methodists in Lower Burma but to form one autonomous Upper Burma Conference. All superintendent ministers (except [ 181 ]

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Bishop) were now Burmans or Lushais, although there were only thirteen ‘active’ ministers to look after 144 churches. The remaining missionaries (except Bishop) trained Burmese staff in colleges in Mandalay and Tahan. Rev. Vulchuka was elected District Finance Secretary and Rev. Haolet emerged as the main cheerleader for unity.44 The Transfer of Authority Standing Committee identified five prerequisites for autonomy. The Methodist Church must be legally constituted and be able to make decisions without reference to any body outside the country. All church property must be owned by the Trust Association. The Methodist Church in Upper Burma must remain part of World Methodism, and be able to manage without grants or personnel from abroad. A Queen’s Counsel drafted a scheme for autonomy. There would be a Burma Conference with its own President, the three area councils would become districts with their own synods and chairmen, and pro tem the Somra Area would amalgamate with the Burmese Area.45 Synod approved the Deed of Foundation, the Deed of Church Order and a timetable for Autonomy and a resolution was to be put before the British Methodist Conference in July 1964.46 In January 1964 a special Foundation Conference was convened to confirm the arrangements. It was unexpectedly turbulent. U Tin Myint attacked U Ba Ohn, Khongsais denounced the link between Somra and the Burmese District, and Lushais tried to hurry things along ‘before everything was wrecked’. Some people wanted the missionaries to stay, others wanted them to go, and U Hla Pe was ‘his usual nuisance’.47 In the end, Synod elected Rev. Chalhuana as Secretary and Rev. U Ba Ohn as President of the Burma Conference.48 In 1955 Vincent had described Ba Ohn as ‘the most promising of the younger men’ and he turned out to be an outstanding President (figure 13). In the meantime Ba Ohn had to fend off some fierce criticism. Some accused him of being too close to U Tin Myint, others of being too close to the British, and U Tin Myint accused him of dragging his feet over autonomy.49 There was a dramatic last-minute hitch because the documents referred to the ‘New Church’. This contravened the 1964 National Solidarity Act which prohibited any ‘new’ associations. However, the Standing Orders for the new Conference were confirmed and in July 1964 the Methodist Conference in Sheffield approved ‘the autonomy of the Methodist Church in Upper Burma’.50 One circle needs to be squared. It concerns Methodist mission schools. All but one of them had disappeared by 1945 – Mandalay Methodist Girls High School was the only one registered as a private primary school.51 In 1947 Synod decided to concentrate on its hostels rather [ 182 ]

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13 Synod, 1964. Front row: Revs Denis Reed (third from left), Vulchuka (fifth from left), U Ba Ohn (centre), Zokima (sixth from right), Aye Ko (fifth from right); Miss Florence Cleaver (third from right), Daw Mi Mi (extreme right). Second row: Rev. Edward Bishop (seventh from left), Dr Jamaldin (ninth from left), Rev. Leslie Cowell (third from right), U Khein Thein (extreme right). Back row: U Tun Myint (fourth from right).

than the schools. It did not support proposals for a ‘Union Christian School’ in Rangoon because of a lack of interest among Methodist parents in Upper Burma.52 However, Kingswood School in Kalaw reopened in March 1948 with 175 European and Indian children. It was jointly owned by the Methodist Synod in Upper Burma and the American Methodists in Lower Burma. The Monywa circuit also opened a Methodist school with about 100 pupils on roll.53 In 1948 the Government recognised the Methodist post-primary schools in Monywa and Mandalay, but turned down an application to open a United Post-Primary School in Mandalay.54 The headmistress of the Pakokku Methodist School ‘ran off’ with it, registering it in her own name under the Registration Act of 1963.55 Childe argued (and rightly so) that schools were no longer places in which to ‘win people to the Church’. In Upper Burma they never had been. Indeed by 1963 only two Methodist schools remained.56 [ 183 ]

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It was a different story in the Upper Chindwin where there were eighteen single-teacher Methodist primary schools in 1961.57 People moved around frequently, classes were very big and the schools opened and closed with bewildering rapidity. Students had to go to Mandalay for secondary schooling and many Chin Methodists stayed in the Bailey Hostel. The so-called Methodist ABC schools in the Somra appealed to ambitious Lushai or Khongsai parents because they concentrated on Burmese literacy, which was so vital in the jobs market. The ABC schools also taught children to read the Bible and to sing Methodist hymns. Crucially they admitted girls, a rarity in the Chin States during the 1960s. Shortages of Christian teachers limited the progress of Methodist education. Indeed there were few qualified teachers of any sort in Burma after the war.58 The problem threatened to get worse in 1948 when the Government attempted to introduce compulsory primary education without training more teachers. A proposal for joint Methodist–Government emergency teacher-training institutions was rejected.59 There was a sense of déja vu in 1961 when new regulations required parental consent before religions other than the pupils’ own could be taught in schools. As in the 1930s mission schools were forced to choose between admitting pupils and teaching Christianity.60 The Church explored alternative ways of influencing young people.61 Some Methodist teachers started ‘dame’ schools in their own homes, and in one Government School in Monywa a Methodist teacher told stories of the birth of Jesus during revision classes on Ivanhoe. It must have been very confusing.62 Not a single Buddhist student was reported to have been converted in a Methodist school since the war.63 Synod decided to concentrate more than ever on hostels, scholarships and particularly on unregulated Sunday schools. Buddhist parents seemed quite happy to send their children to them and many classes were composed entirely of Buddhist children. In 1961 an officer’s wife started a Methodist Sunday school in an army barracks.64 By 1965 the missionaries fervently hoped that the Government would nationalise their two remaining schools. It would at least resolve the problems of staffing and finance.65 In July 1964 Mandalay High School had only two students in its matriculation class. The teachers (supposedly all good Methodists) were being a nuisance. They openly defied Synod and seemed determined to get the missionaries locked up.66 The headmaster, U Tin Myint, was previously at Monywa Methodist School where he had gained a dubious reputation.67 He vehemently supported the military Government, and was distrusted by many church members in Mandalay. The missionaries [ 184 ]

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sighed with relief when he finally wrested control of the school away from Synod.68 Only Monywa School now remained on the Methodist books. It had long been on the verge of bankruptcy. The missionaries were secretly overjoyed when the Government finally announced the nationalisation of all private schools. It marked the sad end to a long, and sometimes glorious, tradition of Wesleyan Methodist education.69 The phrase leaving for good was written into the passports of Europeans leaving Burma in the 1960s. It implied finality. On 1 April 1965 – the morning of Bishop’s departure – the Government announced the nationalisation of private schools. Bishop was delighted, but he feared, irrationally, that the authorities might drag him back to sort out the mess in Monywa School.70 For eight hours he wandered incognito around the backstreets of Rangoon in his sunglasses. All the while he looked furtively over his shoulder until finally a soldier at the airport scribbled in his passport the magic words ‘leaving Burma for good’. Then he scrambled onto a BOAC VC10 and safety.71 Reed stayed on for a few more months in Mandalay to help U Ba Ohn. Cowell assisted Chalhuana in Tahan. The missionaries had shared the tears, laughter and fears of ordinary Burmese people, and since 1962 the common enemy was not London but Rangoon. Miss Cleaver summed up the feelings of many when she said, ‘I do not like the look of things – anything can happen.’ Indeed Mandalay was beginning to feel more like the Wild West than the Far East. It was unwise to ‘leave a bit of land or a house unoccupied’ even for a moment. One day, complete strangers walked into the mission compound and started to build houses there. U Ba Ohn could find no-one in authority prepared to tell them to ‘clear off’.72 In March 1966 it was announced that all missionaries must leave by 31 May.73 Bishop and Miss Cleaver had already gone, but Reed and Cowell were still there together with fifty-eight Americans, fourteen British Protestants and a number of Catholic missionaries.74 When Reed arrived back in Britain in May 1966 he addressed the Missionary Committee. He described Burma as a closed country in which the army insisted on compulsory Sunday working, students were forced to attend work camps and teachers had to remain ‘on call’ during the holidays. Methodist congregations were diminishing and the annual District Youth Conferences had been abandoned. The Government had sequestered the Theological Training Institution and the Methodist centre of gravity had shifted from Mandalay to Tahan. There were few Burman Methodists, although the Lushai Church had grown dramatically. In [ 185 ]

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1966 the odds were stacked against the survival of the little Methodist Church in Upper Burma.75

Notes 1

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2 3 4

5

6

7

8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20

John H. Badgley, ‘Burma’s Military Government: A Political Analysis’, Asian Survey, 2:6 (1962), 24–31, Richard Butwell, ‘U Nu’s Second Comeback Try’, Asian Survey, 9:11 (1969), 869, and Walinsky, ‘The Rise and Fall of U Nu’, 269. Badgley, ‘Burma’s Military Government’, 27. E.g. the Burma Corporation, Unilever and the Burmah Oil Company were nationalised and the Ford Foundation, Asia Foundation, Fulbright and British Council programmes were curtailed. See Josef Silverstein, ‘Burma: Ne Win’s Revolution Considered’, Asian Survey, 32:10 (1966), 95–102. Production in private enterprise fell by 13 per cent in 1963–64. There were only 3,000 tractors in the whole of Burma, and cattle became the ‘engines of agriculture’. Rev. Edward Bishop b. Blackheath, London 1929; educated in Welling and Dartford; Ordnance Survey cartographic draughtsman; married Barbara Chandler 1956; Handsworth College; served in Burma for eight years; sons, Martin and Philip, born in Burma; circuits in Stevenage, Ashford and Canterbury. See Bishop, Journal, a daily record of Bishop’s last full year in Burma (March 1964– April 1965), Monywa, 20 and 25 March and 7, 9 and 20 April 1964; see also Bishop, Journal: Sermons, 1964. All Burmese districts were allocated the same number of items regardless of local demand. So (for instance) piles of expensive Chinese brocades rotted in stores in the Chin Hills. Rev. Ivan Homer b. 1929; studied science at Leicester University; candidated for ministry while doing national service; trained at Headingley College, Burma in 1956–64; ordained in Mandalay; met and married Ruth Bain while stationed in Naga Hills; two children; stationed in Kyaukse (plus Chauk and Kalaw). Homer, Interview, 2007. Bishop, Journal, Monywa, 1 June 1964. Rev. U Hla Thaung’s brother was driving the youth group to sing carols at an army camp. The Land Rover collided with a jeep whose owner demanded K.200 for repairs. Bishop, Journal, Monywa, 12 May and 14 November 1964. In the end he went to Mawlaik (three days upriver, two days downriver) for the replacement tyres. He could have bought four tyres and sold two on the black market. Under the so-called Aung San–Attlee and Let Ya–Freeman agreements (1947) Burma agreed to repay debts to Britain and to cede military bases. In return Burma received military and economic aid from Britain and Commonwealth countries. Some prewar politicians favoured pro-Western cooperation, but feared it would provoke popular opposition. UN protection was uncertain after the Korean War. See Badgley, Politics among the Burmans, pp. 5–72. Badgley blames colonial turpitude on the Village Acts of 1887 and 1889. Forward, III, 19, 15 May 1965. Ne Win told the Revolutionary Council to show workers how ‘to think correctly and do the right thing’. Many pongyis refused to register in 1964, or to recognise the All Buddha Sasana Sangha Organisation conference in March 1965. Ninety-two monks were arrested in April 1965. Bishop, Journal, Monywa, 12 March and 20 August 1964. Richard Butwell, ‘Ne Win’s Burma: At the End of the First Decade’, Asian Survey, 12:10 (1972), 906. Bishop, Journal, Monywa, 20 April and 18 July 1964, and 23 March 1965. U Nu suspended the Htoon Daily in 1961 and detained the editor, U Htun Pe. See Anna J. Allott, Inked Over, Ripped Out: The Burmese Storytellers and the Censors, Bangkok, Silkworm, 1993, pp. 6–11, for an overview of state censorship.

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26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49

The editor of The Nation, U Law Yone, was arrested in August 1963; also, Bishop, Journal, Monywa, 25 May 1964. The government-owned Working People’s Daily first appeared on 1 October 1963. See Louis J. Walinsky, Economic Development in Burma, 1951–1960. New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1962, p. 393, and Robert A. Holmes, ‘Burmese Domestic Policy: The Politics of Burmanization’, Asian Survey, 7:3 (1967), 192. Bishop, Journal, 20 April 1964. See Walinsky, Economic Development in Burma, p. 393; the amnesty was part of the 1949 ‘Bandung Strategy’. Holmes, ‘The Politics of Burmanization’. Frank Trager (New York University), John H. Badgley (Johns Hopkins University), Richard Butwell and Fred von der Mehden (New York University), Louis J. Walinsky (University of Maryland), Laurence D. Stifel (Rockefeller Foundation), Robert A. Holmes (Columbia University), Josef Silverstein (Rutgers, New Jersey) and Lee S. Bigelow (Yale University) were among those active during the 1950s and 1960s. Only 8,344 had left during the whole of 1963. Bishop, Journal, Monywa, 27 June and 7 March 1964. Foreign loans provided about 70 per cent of the state’s income in 1959 and the Soviet Union was a major donor. Birmingham University Special Collections, BCMS Box 2/Cooke, 13 May 1951. Homer, Interview, 2007. It was illegal to exchange another person’s receipt. Bishop, Journal, Monywa, 19 May, 14 August and 8 October 1964; report in the Working People’s Daily. Bishop, Journal, Monywa, 22 May, 27 May and 2 June 1964. Bishop, Journal, Monywa, 21 May, 23 May, 1 June and 2 June 1964. Bishop, Journal, Monywa, 18 August 1964. Hope Musgrave had served in Burma since 1949. She died, aged ninety-three, in August 2008. Bishop, Journal, Mandalay, 20, 22 and 25 April 1964; newborn children were added to the mother’s FRC by immigration officers in the district of residence. Bishop, Journal, Monywa, 4 April, 22 April and 6 May 1964. Bishop was a Circuit Superintendent; Reed, Cowell and Miss Cleaver worked in advisory or training capacities. Bishop, Journal, 12 May 1964. Bishop, Journal, Mandalay, 4 September and Monywa, 3 October 1964 and 5 January 1965. G.H. Wolfensberger, ‘Multiplying the Loaves: The Bible in Mission and Evangelism, a Bible Month in a Burmese Town’ (undated). See Bishop, Journal, Monywa, 16 and 27 September, 1, 3, 6, 10, 13 and 30 October, 1 and 20 November, 23 and 25 December 1964, also Sermons. Bishop, Journal, Sermons, 1961–62. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Synod Letter, 2 December 1963. Rev. Chalhuna was appointed Conference Secretary. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Burma District Report, 1952. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Synod, 27 November–2 December 1963, Minutes. Bishop, Journal, Mandalay, 21 July and 1 August 1964. U Hla Pe was reputed to be garrulous. Homer once left his sermon notes at home and asked Hla Pe to pray. Homer cycled back home, got the notes and returned before the prayer had finished. Bishop, Journal, Mandalay, 20 November 1964. The election of Rev. U Ba Ohn went to the third ballot. U Ba Ohn received twenty-one votes and Reed nineteen. In 1955 U Ba Ohn studied at Selly Oak College. Bishop, Journal, Monywa, 11 April 1964. U Ba Ohn was Chairman of the Mandalay School Management Committee when U Tin Myint was headmaster. There may have been rivalry between the U Ba Ohn and U Hla Thaung factions.

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53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

73

74

75

SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Childe–Reed, 8 July 1964, and Conference Agenda, p. 253. Homer claimed that some missionaries wanted autonomy sooner (Interview, 2007). SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/Synod Letter, 17 January 1946. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/MRP/Box 4/Synod Representative Session Minutes, 17 January 1946. Rev. George West (Anglican Bishop of Rangoon) asked Synod to contribute Rs 4000. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50, Synod Minutes, 18 January 1947. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/1945–50/Box 1286/Synod General Letter and 17 January 1948 (Methodists, SPG and ABM). SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Reed–Childe, 9 August 1963. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Childe–Reed, 17 November 1963. SOAS/MMS/Un-catalogued/Temporary File/Reed–Childe, 7 September 1961. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod Minutes, January 1949. SOAS/MMS/Minutes/Box 1286/1945–50/Synod General Letter, 15 January 1949; SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Reed–Childe, 7 September1954. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Synod Minutes, December 1961. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Childe–Reed, 17 November 1954. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Reed–Childe, 7 September 1954. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Jones–Childe, 11 August 1961. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Synod Minutes, December 1961, and Synod Letter, January 1962. Bishop, Journal, Monywa, 23 March 1964. Bishop, Journal, Monywa, 11 June 1964. He had previously taught at the Methodist school in Monywa. Bishop, Journal, Monywa, 27 June and 4 July 1964. Bishop, Journal, 3 November 1964. In 1965 numbers on roll rose to 229, but income was still K.200 short of expenditure. Another thirty to forty pupils were needed to break even. He was still nominally the Principal. Bishop, Journal, pp. 99–100. Trager, ‘The Political Split in Burma’, 155; Badgley, Politics among the Burmans, pp. 70 ff.; SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Burma District Report, 1956–57, Cleaver–Annesley; Reed–Pile, 9 March 1966. All refer to a sense of discontinuity, loss of identity and a crisis in civil society. Rumours had circulating for many months. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File/Reed–Childe, 20 January 1963 speaks of a report under the headline ‘One Way Traffic’ in a Burmese newspaper warning missionaries that re-entry permits would not be renewed. There were reported to be sixty-four missionaries still in the country, including ten BCMS missionaries and four USPG (United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel) missionaries. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, Press Release, 29 March 1966, and the Conference of British Missionary Societies. Unsubstantiated rumours were discussed at an emergency meeting of the Burma Group, London, 6 April 1966. One rumour said that missionaries who had been in Burma since 1948 were exempted from the expulsion order, and another that only £7 per person could be taken out of the country. Florence Cleaver’s debriefing interview, 6 May 1966, reported that a RC missionary had been imprisoned for lending his car to dissidents. SOAS/MMS/Uncatalogued/Temporary File, Reed’s address to the Eastern Committee, 1966.

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Retrospect

Four protagonists eyed each other uneasily at the beginning of this account. ‘Old’ Burma had already died by 1886 (although its spirit lived on), the colonial order ended in 1948 and the missionaries left Burma in 1966. Only ‘new Burma’ survived into the twenty-first century. It metamorphosed into a military dictatorship in 1962 and since then army generals have ruled continuously.1 Popular antipathy – once directed at colonial officials and missionaries – has broadened into general xenophobia and narrowed into distrust of government.2 Everyone suffered some pain when Burma lurched from past into present, and the prize was plucked from old sparring partners. Nationalists, pongyis, students, workers, thakins, ideologues and even missionaries had dreamed of a better Burma, but all missed out on the brave new world. Perhaps Sheldon’s warning that converts had everything to lose and nothing to gain applied more generally to society at large rather than Methodist proselytes in particular. Under General Ne Win, Burma lost its voice and its way. Oil and paddy production plummeted, foreign debt and inflation mushroomed and the country was cut off from the rest of the world. In 1988 a senior army officer confessed that the Government was ‘corrupt, stratified and generally stupid’.3 Student demonstrations in September 1988 ended in bloodshed. A military coup led by General Saw Maung established a military junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC).4 SLORC promised to hold elections, which it did in 1990. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won a resounding victory.5 SLORC refused to hand over power until it had assembled a National Convention to draw up a new constitution. Twenty years were to elapse before a convention (of sorts) was to meet. During that time the tatmadaw (Burmese armed forces) became ever more powerful, SLORC rebranded itself as State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), Burma changed its name to Myanmar [ 189 ]

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and close ties were cultivated with China.6 Political dissidence was suppressed, political opponents languished in prison and Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest since 2003.7 The tatmadaw and ethnic groups are still locked in what Chao Tzang Yawnghwe calls an ‘imperial war’ and Aung San Suu Kyi describes as Burma’s ‘second struggle for independence’.8 The Government claims that it must have a huge standing army to maintain national unity. Human rights abuses continue to this day.9 The Hill States supply narcotics to the world and feed drug abuse in Myanmar itself.10 HIV/AIDS, inflation, high food prices, low wages, declining foreign exchange rates, floods in September 2002 and the cyclone Nargis in May 2008 have compounded Myanmar’s economic, social and political woes.11 Democracy (or the lack of it) is the most potent issue in modern Myanmar. Many Burmans and Western liberals regard democratisation as the prerequisite for development. Others suspect that ‘democracy’ is a codeword for ‘Westernisation’ which preoccupies political elites. Ordinary Burmans, they say, are more concerned with rice prices, health and jobs.12 Michael Aung Thwin argues that the electoral process is not the only way to determine political legitimacy.13 Mary Callahan reminds us that the tatmadaw is a major employer, and that it provides incomes for thousands of families.14 As Robert Taylor points out, as long as the military junta is sponsored by China, it can and will ignore Western opinion.15 Increasingly, therefore, Western commentators urge Burma to find its own solutions and insist that the SPDC must break the deadlock with Aung San Suu Kyi. Others hope that a ‘third way’ can be found between what Donald Seekins calls a predatory state and a passive society. Gustaaf Houtman defines it as a contest between Ana (‘power’ as exercised by the tatmadaw) and Awza (‘influence’ as exercised by the NLD). David Steinberg warns that ‘quick transformational political change’ will not happen.16 It is worth remembering too that the SPDC has troubles of its own. Some years ago it controversially built an immensely costly new capital in Naypyidaw. General Khin Nyunt was dismissed in 2005 and in September 2007 Buddhist monks demonstrated against oil and rice-price rises. The episode ended in bloodshed and the imprisonment of many monks.17 There was a major Cabinet reshuffle in 2008.18 A Constituent Assembly was convened in 2008 and a referendum produced a huge (if dubious) majority in favour of a new constitution. Fresh elections were promised and were duly held on 7 November 2010. NLD boycotted the election, but other parties decided to contest them. Predictably, and amid accusations of ballot-rigging, the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) won about 80 per cent [ 190 ]

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Table 4

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District

Circuits Societies 2000

Mandalay Tahan Homalin Tamu Haka Letpanchaung Mindat Rezua Paletwa Area Falam Area Total Source:

Upper Myanmar Conference: total Methodist community, 2000–5

4 11 7 4 7 3 7 3 5 – 51

11 43 31 13 15 11 38 11 14 5 192

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

1218 1360 1322 1331 1309 1322 12663 8574 8563 8550 8630 9205 2443 2330 2294 2434 2475 2636 3437 3406 3569 3579 3661 3619 1767 2038 1991 2036 1884 1870 3584 3406 3279 3365 2744 2740 4261 4222 4534 4465 4316 1106 1062 1167 1237 1241 1319 861 840 805 763 866 1277 – – – 340 268 237 27079 27277 27212 28169 27543 28541

Upper Myanmar Methodist Church Conference Office, Mandalay.

of the seats. The leading opposition party, the National Democratic Front, was decimated. A few days later Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest. Opposition voices dismiss this whole process as an ‘absurd fiction’.19 Mandalay has specific problems of its own. It has become the centre of drug and jade trafficking and large numbers of ethnic Chinese have flooded into the city. They control commerce and industry and occupy desirable downtown neighbourhoods, causing many Burmans to move to shanty townships around the outskirts. Traditionalists blame ‘Sinonisation’ for the cultural or moral decay they say blights life in Mandalay today.20 In the midst of all this turmoil it is remarkable that the Methodist Church has survived. In 1960 there were 10,000 Methodists in Upper Burma and now there are 28,500 (Table 4). In 1964 there were three districts (Tahan, Homalin and Mandalay) in the Upper Burma Methodist Conference. Now there are ten. Today, only 4.6 per cent of Methodists in Upper Myanmar are in the Mandalay District, which is the equivalent of the entire Upper Burma District in colonial times. Indeed Table 4 reveals that the Methodist Church in Myanmar is now a Chin church. Today 95.4 per cent of Methodists are Lushais, Khongsais and Hualngos. Methodism in the Upper Chindwin (and especially amongst the Lushais) grew very rapidly after 1964.21 As it did so, seven new Lushai districts were carved out of the original Tahan District (Table 5). The Chinning of Burmese Methodism, or rather its Mizoisation – for [ 191 ]

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Table 5

Expansion and division of the Tahan District, 1964-2002

Name

Status

Date

Notes

Falam Tamu Haka Paletwa Mindon Letpanchaung Mindat

District District District Area Field District District

1968 1977 1979 1988 1992 1994 2000

Designated an area in 2003

Rezua

District

2002

Source:

Created by division of Falam District New area created by the Conference Created by division of Tamu District Created by division of Letpanchaung and Tamu Districts Created by division of Haka District

Upper Myanmar Conference Office, Mandalay.

the dominance is largely Lushai – has had major consequences.22 All but two of the presidents of the Upper Burma Conference since 1964 have been Lushais.23 The Methodist Training College in Mandalay is overwhelmingly Chin, and about half the congregation of Wesley Church in Mandalay is Lushai. Occasional friction between Chin and Burman Methodists has had to be resolved by presidents of Conference and chairmen of the Mandalay District. The survival of the Methodist Church in Buddhist Upper Burma is little short of a miracle (figure 14). There were only slightly fewer members in the Mandalay District in 2006 than there were in 1900 when numbers were inflated by colonial officials and their families. In 1900 the ‘Methodist community’ was 1,200. In 1958 it had dropped to 1,034, but as Table 6 shows, by 2006 it had returned to 1,199. It is true that many of the current members are Chins who have come to live, work or study in Mandalay. A conservative estimate would suggest that the total number of Burmans in the Upper Myanmar Methodist Church is about 700 (out of the total of 28,500 Methodists). In light of colonial and postcolonial history it is surprising there are so many. The Mandalay District has had to adapt or die. Its greatest achievement was the establishment of a circuit in Yangon in 1972 (Table 7). The Yangon circuit has three societies and a mixed membership of Lushais and Burmans – ‘immigrants’ from Upper Burma. They meet in the centre of Yangon above a small store in a busy shopping street. Worshippers trudge up several flights of rickety wooden stairs to the very top floor. It is a curious sequel to Bestall’s dream so long ago. In many ways Methodists punch above their weight in Myanmar today, running schools for street-children in Mandalay, a hospital in Tahan and nationwide projects for AIDS victims and drug addicts. [ 192 ]

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14 Group of Methodists in Mandalay, 2003. Front row: Rev. Zaw Win Aung (second from left), Rev. Lalmuana (fifth from left), Rev. U Ba Ohn (sixth from left), Daw Pu Lay (third from right). Second row: U Tin Maung Htwe (sixth from left), Dr Khin Maung Than (eleventh from left). Table 6 Circuits Mandalay Chindwin Yangon Kha-Pa-P NewArea Total

Numerical returns, Mandalay District, 2006

Societies Ministers 5 1 3 3 – 12

9 2 2 1 – 14

Local Full Baptised New Methodist preachers members children converts community 36 34 13 6 89

511 168 188 33 1 901

45 96 82 10 – 233

0 0 0 0 0 0

573 270 270 81 5 1199

Note: The Methodist community includes members, members-on-trial, baptised children and regular attendants. Sources: Upper Myanmar Conference Office, Mandalay and Minutes of Wesleyan and Methodist Conferences.

After 1966 it became impossible for the Church to proselytise, and it has survived only by retaining existing members. Backsliders are leaned upon and inducements are offered to those who remain loyal. Methodist children are nurtured from baptism to adulthood [ 193 ]

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Table 7

Mandalay District, circuits and societies, 2007

Circuit

Original circuit

Societies

Mandalay Chindwin Kha Pa Paa Yangonb

Mandalay, Kyaukse, Monywa Pakokku, Chauk, Pyawbwe –

Pin Oo Lwin (Maymyo), St Luke’s Mawlaik Yangon, Mingladon, Insein

Notes: a Kha Pa Pa is an amalgamation of the former Pakokku, Chauk, Kyaukse and Pyawbwe circuits; b the Yangon circuit was formed in 1972. Source: Upper Myanmar Methodist Church, Conference Office, Mandalay.

and encouraged to marry other church members. Informal genetictagging and delicate matchmaking facilitate intermarriage between Methodist families and ‘marrying-out’ is frowned upon.24 The Church provides a refuge for Methodists in difficulty and danger, and it employs its own members as youth workers, project managers, administrators, librarians and janitors. Methodist families live together as neighbours on Church Trust land.25 A fierce group loyalty has developed and most Methodists are careful to avoid unnecessary political entanglements.26 Methodist children in Upper Myanmar today attend state schools where they are invariably among the highest achievers and are considered to be fashionably ‘modern’. Methodist families integrate well into their local communities and several have developed small entrepreneurial enterprises – clinics, tea shops, nursery schools and motorrepair shops. It speaks volumes for the common sense and tolerance of both Methodists and ordinary Buddhist-Burmans that cultural ‘differences’ between them are accepted with good humour.27 It has been fortunate that in recent years Burmans have tended to view colonial times through rose-coloured spectacles, and clashes between monks and soldiers underline the fact that state oppression applies to everyone. Consequently Methodists are no more discriminated against than anyone else, although the stasis is fragile and in the blink of an eye they could be singled out as scapegoats.28 Three questions scratch across the narrative like fingernails across silk. The first ponders whether the Methodist missionaries were politically motivated. Missionary voices rarely challenged government policies either in colonial times or in Independent Burma. It is difficult to interpret political silence, but it seemed to imply compliance before 1948, and dissent afterwards. Perhaps the question should be recast to read, did the missionaries challenge official power of any sort? [ 194 ]

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Jean Comaroff reminds us that human agency is individually motivated, and that missionaries have never spoken with a single voice. Susan Thorne points out that missionaries were shapers of opinion, not just children of their times, nevertheless they have individual and different opinions.29 The Methodist missionaries were all children of the Empire, but their responses to it ranged from imperialism-byconviction to profound ambivalence. Most of them were also born into Methodism, but again they were Methodist by degrees. The early missionaries had an unwavering faith but some of their successors in the 1960s harboured serious doubts. In this sense Imperialist and Wesleyan discourses followed similar trajectories. Very little is known about some missionaries and not much is known about most.30 Nevertheless, it is possible to generalise that they were brave, committed, unspectacular and predictable. They cared for their Burmese congregations with a sacrificial zeal, but rarely stuck out their necks to champion Buddhist-Burmese causes. Discretion usually took the better part of valour. Most pre-war missionaries were comfortable within the colonial system – not ‘insiders’ but nevertheless confidants of district commissioners and lieutenant governors. They rarely challenged the system which protected them. Later missionaries were less constrained and less compromised. Definitely ‘outsiders’ in postcolonial Burma, they genuinely shared the frustrations of ordinary Burmese people. Seams of gold ran through the missionaries – it was thicker in some than in others. Winston was a pioneer and Bestall a builder. Phillips, Vickery, Sherratt and Vincent were muscular heroes; Young was unblinking. Willans, Shepherd and Cowell were noble, intelligent men, and Firth was extraordinarily brave. Bishop was gritty, witty and wise. That quartet of tough angels (the Misses Butt, Robertson, Cleaver and Merrick) were tenacious and spirited. The list could go on, but three men broke the mould and stood out from the rest. Rev. Edgar Bradford would have crackled with ideas in any age. His eccentric schemes often went expensively wrong, but they were original and elegant. At a time when most missionaries studiously avoided squalid native hospitals, Bradford campaigned to improve them. A lateral thinker, he was unafraid of failure and always reached for the stars. Rev. Arthur Sheldon was the opposite. He was an unprepossessing prophet without honour. He told things as they were, perceptively, analytically and uncompromisingly. Sheldon’s sombre clarity cast a beam far into the future. The irascible, cheroot-smoking Denis Reed was different again. He served in Burma during thirty-six fractious years. He and his friend Vincent were ‘the lion and the lamb’ but it was Reed – the lamb – who became the lion.31 He faced dangers, stood his ground, cajoled, fumed, charmed and finally defined Burma as victim [ 195 ]

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not villain. Reed was both political priest and brilliant architect of autonomy. Worldliness not saintliness set the three men apart. They were unstuffy and unorthodox, visionaries, free-thinkers, pragmatists and takers of political risk. They drove things forward and refused to behave properly when behaving badly achieved better results. The second question is whether or not Methodist mission stations in Upper Burma were essays in colonisation. Until the 1950s at least, there were lines that could not be crossed between missionaries and Burmese ministers. This was what hurt Rev. U Po Tun. He felt that one code of conduct applied to Burmans and another to Europeans. Burmese ministers who committed indiscretions were humiliated publicly. Missionaries on the other hand were gently dressed down in the privacy of the Chairman’s study. Methodist missionaries regarded themselves as deciders, managers and manipulators. They responded to criticism with hurt incomprehension. Their brand of colonialism was gentle and patronising rather than exploitative, but it was colonialism nonetheless. The evidence was too great to ignore. Winston and Bestall were out-and-out imperialists. Young was more District Commissioner than missionary. Brave and sagacious though Firth was, he was also incorrigibly paternalistic. There were paradoxes galore. Although they were a far cry from Sir Harry Johnston’s godly imperialists (See Chapter 1, n. 4), the Methodist missionaries in Burma enjoyed ambiguous relationships with colonial compatriots. They were reluctant to hand over the reins of power to their Burmese charges and in the end did so only under considerable pressure from the Missionary Society at home, legislators in Burma and dissidents within the ‘native’ Church. The third question concerns Sheldon’s suggestion that Burmese converts had everything to lose and nothing to gain. Was he right? Some illumination is provided by a sentimental little incident that took place on a steamy day in January 2007. A group of elderly men and women sat on the verandah of the old Kyaukse Mission House. They looked across towards the former slojd school building and reminisced about the old days. One of them was a lady called Daw Khin Ye. She began to sing a hymn the missionaries had taught her. The others knew it well and joined in the chorus. Yay Shu Chit taw mu bar ei, Kyan So Chat Phyint Thi Ya Ei.32

The doggerel spoke of morality, guilt, forgiveness, salvation, trust, obedience, righteousness and sin – concepts much loved by Methodist [ 196 ]

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missionaries. The old people sang with dignity and respect. Daw Khin Ye looked back wistfully over a long life. Her early years in the 1930s had been dominated by colonial rule and Dobama Asiayone. As a teenager during the war she had faced allied bombs, the BIA and the kempeitai. She was married and had raised a young family when General Aung San was assassinated and independence was gained. Her children started primary school during the Civil War years. Daw Khin Ye became middle-aged under U Nu and she was widowed under General Ne Win. Now, in her declining years, the wheel had turned full circle. She could see in the SPDC the imperial rulers of old.33 George Bernard Shaw articulated the ideas of many radical intellectuals of the time when he wrote that missionaries taught ‘natives the gospel of peace’ while imperialist traders sold them ‘adulterated Manchester goods’.34 This jibe tinged with cynicism tells one story, the naïve verses sung by the old people in Kyaukse told another. It came almost as a shock to discover that these elderly Methodists cherished such affectionate memories of the missionaries. They chuckled like former pupils discussing idiosyncratic old teachers as they reflected on a rich, safe and reliable fellowship that had lasted them a lifetime. In times of danger the Church had provided sanctuary. Buddhist friends had envied them this escape-hatch from colonial rule, war and arbitrary government. Perhaps, after all, Methodist Burmans had gained most and lost least. Maitrii Aung-Thwin defines Burma’s past, present and future as a complicated potion of personalities, intellectual influences, culture and political forms. Its contradictions are still keenly debated in hundreds of ‘local tea shops’ across Upper Burma.35 Charney is right to identify Buddhist monks as the custodians of ‘Burmese tradition and the core of Burmese intellectual life’. Buddhism was the giant and Methodism the midget. Nevertheless, the midget succeeded in weaving colourful and resilient strands into the warp and weft of a national discourse.36

Notes 1 2 3 4 5

See Donald M. Seekins, The Disorder in Order: The Army-state in Burma since 1962, Bangkok, White Lotus Press, 2002. Mikael Gravers, Nationalism as Political Paranoia in Burma, Richmond, Curzon, 1999, p. 2. David I. Steinberg, Burma, the State of Myanmar, Washington, DC, Georgetown University Press, 2001, p. 25. In 2002 General Ne Win died under house arrest. His son-in-law and grandsons were sentenced to death for allegedly planning a coup. Of the 20.8 million electorate, 72.5 per cent voted for ninety-three parties. NLD won 392 of the 485 seats.

[ 197 ]

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7

8

9 10

11

12

13 14 15

16

Andrew Selth, The Burmese Armed Forces next Century: Continuity or Change, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre Working Paper No. 338, Canberra, Australian National University, 1999. Defence accounts for about 40 per cent of the annual budget and by 2000 there were an estimated half a million regular troops. The precolonial name Myanmar included non-Burmese peoples. The leadership of the State Peace and Development Council was unchanged, but several regional military commanders entered government. Two billion dollars worth of armaments flowed into Myanmar between 1990 and 1998. Huge quantities of Burmese rice were exported to China, and Chinese consumer goods flooded into Myanmar. In 2002–3 Jiang Zemin and General Than Shwe exchanged visits. China is reported to have access to naval bases in the Andaman Islands. See Mohan Malik, ‘Burma’s Role in Regional Security’, in Burma Myanmar: Strong Regime, Weak State?, ed. Morten B. Pedersen, Emily Rudland and Ronald J. May, London, C. Hurst 2000. The e-newspaper Irrawaddy estimates that 2,100 political prisoners were still being held under detention in 2008. See Martin Smith, ‘Burma’s Ethnic Priorities: A Central or Peripheral Problem’, Burma: The Challenge of Change in a Divided Society, ed. Peter Carey, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1997, and Chao Tzang Yawnghwe, ‘Burma and National Reconciliation: Ethnic Conflict and State-Society Dysfunction’, Burma Lawyers Council, Legal Issues on Burma, 10 (December 2001). A third of Myanmar’s population is nonBurman . Muslim groups straddle the boundary between Rakhine and Bangladesh, and Mizos the border between India and the Chin States. Despite the ceasefires concluded with the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO) and United Wa State Army (UWSA), in 2003 40,000 refugees from Rakhine were still in Bangladesh, 55,000 in Thailand and 8,000 in China. See Bertil Lintner, Politics of the Drug Trade in Burma, Nedlands, University of Western Australia Press, 1993. Exports of opiates were worth more than all legitimate exports in 1996, and the Government earned $600m from narcotics in 2000. The initial producers (hill farmers in minority areas) make little money but warlords, dealers and the tatmadaw have made huge profits. Economist Intelligence Unit, 2003: puts inflation at 55.4 per cent; exchange rate depreciation at 35 per cent and foreign currency reserves at $471.3m. Cyclone Nargis reportedly killed 140,000, left 2 million homeless and disrupted rice production. The junta was unable to cope and imprisoned the prominent monk Ashin Nyanissara, comedian Zarganar and the NLD activist Ohn Kyaing. It is possible that the SPDC has become more flexible in recent years and that the NLD has become less relevant. It was rumoured in 2008 that 100 youth members had left the NLD. See also David I.L. Steinberg, ‘The State, Power and Civil Society in Burma: The Status and Prospects of Pluralism’, in Burma Myanmar: Strong Regime, Weak State?, ed. Pedersen et al. Also, Paul Cook and Martin Minogue, ‘Economic Reform and Political Conditionality in Myanmar’, in Burma: The Challenge of Change in a Divided Society, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1997. They say that democracy has created a ‘hostage syndrome’. Michael Aung Thwin, ‘Parochial Universalism, Democracy, Jihad and the Orientalist Image of Burma: The New Evangelism’, Pacific Affairs, 74:4 (2001–2), pp. 483–505. See Mary P. Callahan, ‘Cracks in the Edifice? Military–Society Relations in Burma since 1988’, in Burma Myanmar: Strong Regime, Weak State?, ed. Pedersen et al. See Robert H. Taylor, ‘The Constitutional Future of Myanmar in Comparative Perspective’, in Burma: The Challenge of Change in a Divided Society, ed. Peter Carey, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1997. The UN special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, appeared to have little success in 2009. David I. Steinberg, Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 182. Also, Morten Pedersen, ‘International Policy on Burma’, in Burma Myanmar: Strong Regime, Weak State?, ed. Pedersen et al; Peter Carey, Burma: The Challenge of Change in a Divided Society, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1997; Seekins, The Disorder in Order; and Houtman, Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics.

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19

20 21

22 23 24 25 26

27 28 29 30

31 32 33 34

Win Tin (senior member of the NLD) was released in September 2008. He was the longest-serving political prisoner (nineteen years). General Khin Nyunt was head of the Intelligence Services and the most flexible member of the junta. In the reshuffle in April 2008, Lt Gen. Myint Swe, Lt Gen. Myint Hlaing, Maj. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and Gen. Thura Myint Aung were all promoted. Aung Thaung (Minister of Industry), who was implicated in the ambush of NLD supporters at Depayin in 2003, is tipped to head the Civilian Government in 2010. The referendum, which was held on 10 May 2008, approved a new constitution: 110 of 440 seats will be reserved for the military; the Senior General will be one of three senior executive officers; the army can declare a state of emergency at any time; amendments will require a 75 per cent majority; and presidential candidates must have resided continuously in Myanmar for twenty years before the election (which eliminates Aung San Suu Kyi). The NLD has always protested that candidates elected in 1990 should take their seats. U Mya Maung, ‘On the Road to Mandalay: A Case Study of the Sinonization of Upper Burma’, Asian Survey, 34:5 (1994), 447–459. Many Chinese are ‘illegals’ with whom the SPDC connives. Nicholas Tapp, ‘The Impact of Missionary Christianity upon Marginalized Ethnic Minorities: The Case of the Hmong’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 20:1 (1989), 70, argues that the expansion of other religions is inhibited when dominant groups join one of the Weberian ‘world religions’. Mizo defines the language and culture of a group of tribes in northern India and Burma. Lushais are the most important – Khongsais much smaller. Rev. U Ba Ohn was a Burman, but all his successors (except Rev. Zaw Win Aung who became President in 2010) have been Lushais. The children and grandchildren of both Rev. U Ba Ohn and Dr Jamaldin, for example, are leaders in the Mandalay Church today. Several church members are employed in the District Office and the YMCA, and they live on land previously occupied by the Mandalay Girls and Boys Wesley High Schools. U Tin Maung Htwe (1948–2009) is a notable exception. He was one of the few active politicians in the Church (Interview, 2007). A graduate civil engineer and treasurer of Wesley Church Mandalay, he was brave, astute, deep-thinking – and a marvellous raconteur. He was the Recruiting Officer for the Mandalay branch of the NLD. He was imprisoned for his political beliefs in 2000, and hundreds of NLD supporters attended his funeral in 2009. They processed behind his coffin which was draped in NLD colours. See Khin Maung Kyi, ‘Patterns of Accommodation to Bureaucratic Authority’, who illustrates how the American culture anthropologist Margaret Mead’s concepts are applied to the context of Burmese society. Bruce Matthews, ‘Buddhism under a Military Regime: The Iron Heel in Burma’, Asian Survey, 33:4 (1993), 408. Dr Henry Lunn, Rev. John Scott-Lidgett, Lord Soper and Dr Colin Morris are examples of leading Methodists whose divergent views about missionary work shaped church opinion. For example, little has been said about the Revs Tilden Bisseker, Douglas Moore, Maurice Russell, Gordon Early, Paul Webb, Frank Froud, J.A.L. Irvine, Ewart Lewis and George Taylor, nor about most of the Women’s Work missionaries – mainly because of a lack of archival information. SOAS/MMS/Temporary File/Reed–Childe, 24 February 1963. ‘The lamb seems to write more strongly than the lion.’ ‘Jesus Loves Me! This I know / For the Bible tells me so.’ Words by Anna B. Warner (1860), tune by William Batchelder Bradbury (1862). A.N. Porter and A.J. Stockwell, British Imperial Policy and Decolonization, 1938–64, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 1987, p. 7. The Englishman ‘conquers and annexes half the world, and calls it Colonisation. When he wants a new market for his adulterated Manchester goods, he sends a

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missionary to teach the natives the gospel of peace,’ Napoleon’s soliloquy from George Bernard Shaw, The Man of Destiny, 1905. Maitrii Aung-Thwin, ‘Introduction: Communities of Interpretation and the Construction of Modern Myanmar’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 39:2 (2008), 187. M.W. Charney, A History of Modern Burma, Cambridge, 2009, p. 206.

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GL OS S ARY

Methodist terms

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Circuit

Conference

Connexion District

Eastern Committee Itinerancy Local preacher

Member

Minister

President of Conference

Groups of churches (societies) administered by a superintendent minister and (lay) circuit stewards. Each circuit holds a quarterly meeting. Governing body of the Church. Meets annually to take important decisions and make policy. Delegates include chairmen of the District and representatives from every part of the Connexion. The Methodist Church in Upper Burma became autonomous with its own Conference in 1965. Overarching co-ordinating organisation of the Methodist Church. Composed of several circuits. Equivalent of Anglican dioceses. Under a Chairman who is equivalent to a Bishop. Missionary Society committee that dealt with Southeast Asia. Movement of ministers between circuits at regular intervals. An unordained and unpaid preacher. Originally accredited to preach only within his/her home circuit. Full members are baptised, instructed in Methodist doctrines and ‘received’ into membership. ‘Members-on-trial’ are under instruction in preparation for full membership. A stipendiary and ordained preacher. Probationary ministers (in the first years of ministry) were not permitted to marry. The Head of the Methodist Church: John Wesley was President throughout his lifetime. Since then all presidents have been senior ordained ministers elected by Conference for one year only. The Vice President is a senior layperson.

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G LO SSA R Y

Society

Synod

Union

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Wesleyans

A single church administered by a society meeting and society stewards. Societies are grouped into circuits. Official policy-making meeting of a District, attended by ministers and representatives from each circuit. Joining of Methodist groups into the single Methodist Church in 1932. Largest group of Methodists and closest to Wesley’s doctrines and organisation. Opposed Calvinistic doctrines of predestination and ‘election’. Generally suspicious of radical politics and the exuberant evangelicalism of Primitive Methodists.

Terms relating to Burma Athi

Bo Boycott

Burma Road Burman Burmanisation

Burmese

Chettiars Chin Communists: Red Flag and White Flag

Persons owing tax obligations to the state. Bu athins were village organisations opposed to tax payments in the 1920s and 1930s. (literally) Officer/captain; title given to local bosses in the 1950s. Political movement in India and Burma against the import of foreign goods and the promotion of swadeshi (indigenous goods). Road built in the 1930s linking Burma and China for military supplies. Majority ethnic group in Burma (as distinct from Shans, Chins, etc.). Ne Win’s policy to compulsorily replace foreign employees (especially Indians, Chinese and Europeans) by Burmese employees. Generic adjective describing the culture, politics and practices of all ethnic groups in Burma. Also the language. Caste of Indian moneylenders from Madras. Generic term for non-Burman ethnic groups in the Upper Chindwin Area. Thakin Soe formed the ‘Red Flags’ in 1946. Than Tun’s supporters were known as ‘White Flags’.

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G LO SSA RY

Conscience Clause

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Dacoits Demonetarisation

Dobama Asiayone Doolies Dyarchy

Hualngos Jataka Kempeitai Khongsai Konbaung Kyat Kyaung Londwin Lushai Lusoes Maistry Maw-gun Mizo

Myo Myochit Myo-oks Paddy Pongyi Pwe Pyo Sangha Sasana Sawbwa

Legislation in 1920s which provided an opt-out for parents not wishing their children to have religious instruction in mission schools. Armed robbers. BSPP policy to remove high-denomination currency notes from circulation and to replace them by notes of smaller denomination. ‘We Burmans’, nationalist political organisation founded in 1930. Hammocks slung between poles and carried by coolies. Montague-Chelmsford Reforms providing powersharing arrangements between an elected House of Representatives and the Governor. Khongsai ethnic group occupying the Somra Tract in the Upper Chindwin. Buddhist birth stories. Japanese military police. See Hualngos (above). Last Burmese royal dynasty. Burmese coin or currency. (Or pongyi-kyaung) Buddhist monastery and monastic school. Dugout canoe or punt poled and used in shallow waters. The largest Chin tribe – related to Mizos of north-eastern India. Armed robbers. Indian Labour Contractors. Records of notable events. An ethnic group in north-eastern India and north-western Burma. Lushais are the predominant mizo group in Burma. Township in pre-colonial administration. Patriotic Party founded by U Saw in the 1930s. Township officer appointed by the British. Rice plant before it is threshed. Buddhist monk. Festival. Verse renderings of Buddhist stories. Collective term for Buddhist monk-hood. Religion, teaching, doctrine. Hereditary Shan prince. [ 203 ]

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G LO SSA R Y

Saya/Sayagyi Sayadaw Separation

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Shinpyu

Simon Commission

Somra Tract Street sweeper

Taik Tatmadaw Thakin

Thamedawzay

Thathameda Thathanabaing Theravada

Thugyi Thuriya Wunthanu Athin Yebaw

Teacher/important teacher. Venerable teacher, senior monk or the head of a monastery. The decision to govern Burma separately from India (as recommended by the Simon Commission) was embodied in the Government of Burma Act 1935, which came into force on 1 April 1937. Ceremony celebrating initiation of a boy into manhood after a period spent as an apprentice monk. Commission headed by Sir John Simon to examine the merits of separating the government of Burma from India. It published the Report of the Indian Commission in 1930. Area in northern Upper Chindwin occupied predominantly by Hualgno people. Most importantly, street sweepers emptied ordure from earth toilets in European houses. They were usually low-caste Indians and key sewage workers. A township in pre-colonial times: less settled than a myo. Burmese military forces. ‘Master’. Title used by European colonialists and adopted by Burmese nationalist members of Dobama Asiayone. Crowded area around the central bazaar in Mandalay. Location of many monasteries and centre of unrest in the 1930s. ‘Head’ or capitation tax. Head of Burmese Buddhist monk-hood. School of Buddhism practised in Burma before the eleventh century. Also adopted in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Sri Lanka. (As distinct from Mahayana and Tantric Buddhism). Village or township headman. ‘The Sun’: first nationalist newspaper, published in Rangoon. Associations of village nationalist organisations founded in the 1920s and 1930s. Honorific title adopted by members of the BIA.

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A P P E NDIX : ME T HODIS T MISSIO N ARIES IN UP P E R B UR MA , 1887–1966

Surname

Christian name

Date in Burma

Notes

Bateson Winston Bestall

Joseph H. W. Ripley Arthur H.

Chaplain Chairman Chairman

Thomas Woodward Sherratt

Thomas W. A. William

1886–88 1887–98 1887–1910, 1920–24 1889–1910 1892–1903 1896–1933

Phillips Vickers

T.G. Agnes T.

1898–1917 1899–1905

Bradford Hoyle Vickery Sheldon Butt Winston Bisseker Hanna

Edgar J. Joshua William Arthur W. Miss Nora F. Dyson Tilden B. Miss K.

1899–1914 1900–2 1903–20 1903–27 1904–25 1904–13 1905–12 1907–10

Chapman

Clement H.

Walters

H. Crawford

Moore Moore Winston

Miss H. R. Douglas Miss J.

1908–23, 1934–44 1910–14, 1918–30 1911–14 1911–12 1912–19

Russell Underwood Young

Maurice H. J. England J. Mervyn

Early Merrick

C. Gordon Miss Anna

1912–26 1913–22 1913–15, 1919–33 1914–15 1915–42

Bible Society Secretary Chairman WW, married William Vickery Acting Chairman

Chairman WW

WW, married F.D. Winston Chairman Chairman WW WW, married Francis Skinner

Chairman

WW

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A PPEN D IX

Surname

Christian name

Date in Burma

Notes

Adcock Skinner Robertson Boyce Hollinshed

Bert Francis E. Miss Margaret Mrs. F. Miss Muriel G.

WW WW WW

Lawley

Miss Lily

1915–19 1916–29 1918–46 1920–21 1920–42, 1947–50 1923–28

Shepherd Webb Guyler Froud Irvine Varney Dawson

H. Vincent Paul W. Miss Fredericka J. Frank J.A.L. Reginald G. Miss Jennie

1925–28 1926–28 1926–55 1927–31

Willans

H. Crowther

1927–56

Leigh Lewis Taylor Firth Reed Murdoch

John L. Ewart W. George E. G. Eric Denis Miss Dorothy

1928–44 1929–35 1929–34 1930–50 1930–66 1930

Vincent

Stanley V.

Smith Hawtin Sewell Bush

Miss Maeve John G. Bernard Sister E.

1930–46, 1956–57 1930–33 1930–42 1930–45 1932–48

Topping Kinchin

Sister L. Frederick A.

Holden Holmes Gibbons

William A. Arthur J. Sister E.

1924–45 1924–36 1925–38

1932–33 1933–41, 1946–56 1934–46 1934–40 1935–39

WW, married E.W. Lewis Acting Chairman WW

WW, married John Leigh Bible Society Secretary

Lay missionary Chairman WW, married Denis Reed Bible Society Secretary WW Lay missionary WW, married Harold Willans WW

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A PPEN D I X

Surname

Christian name

Date in Burma

Notes

Cleaver

1937–66

WW

Acheson Silcock Mackley

Miss Florence L. Robert E. Valentine Miss Dorothy

Morgan Nicholson Pepper Musgrave Jones Broxholme Cowles Cowell Bastin

Miss Nesta Edgar H. Anthony T. Miss Hope D. Clifford J. Derek Miss E. Leslie G. Miss Margaret

1937–44 1937–50 1939–42, 1947–59 1945–60 1947–59 1948–54 1949–65 1951–62 1951–62 1951–61 1951–66 1953–55

Turtle Homer Bain

T. David Ivan R. Miss Ruth

1953–64 1954–65 1955–59

Nurse Bishop Mann Pengelly BlakewaySmith

Claud A. Edward A. Ivor F. Miss Mona David G.

1956–65 1958–65 1960–62 1961–64 1961–64

WW WW

WW

WW WW, married Rev. L.G. Cowell

WW, married Ivan Homer

WW

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B IB L IOGRAPH Y

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Unpublished primary sources American Baptist Foreign Mission Society Records # 4424 Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York Box 5, File 703: Burma Mission Study: Education Committee Report, 1923, Dr C.E. Chaney, Burma Administration Report, 1935, File 706–2-2: Papers of Miss Alice Thayer, 1931, Miss Lucy Wiatt, 1937–41, Miss Parrott, 1930–31. Archives des Missions Étrangers de Paris Rapport Annuel des Évêqes, 1937 and 1938 Birmanie Septrentrionale: Redacteur – Mgr Falière. Notices Biographiques et Fiches Individuelles. Birmingham University: Special Collections BCMS/Burma Missionaries Files/Box 2–3: Papers of Samuel and Lilian Cooke and of Rev. Wilfred Crittle. India Office Library and Records, British Library (IOLR/BL) BL/Eur/C341: Gerald Bourne ICS, ‘Exit from Burma: A Wartime Journey from Rangoon to Simla’; Janet Humble, ‘Out of Burma and Back Again, 1942–46’, 1980. BL/IOR/M/41/3/955–B270/4: Correspondence M. Dabey, 21 March 1943. BL/M/3/955/File B270/40: Report on the Evacuation from Burma. MSS/Eur/E215/64/1944–46: Dorman-Smith Papers. MSS/Eur/395: Article by Lt Col. James Hamilton Gorman. MSS/Eur/419: Account by John Revill Case, Manager Burmah Petroleum Co. Ltd. Methodist Missionary Society Archives at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London (MMS/SOAS) SOAS/WMMS/Burma/Synod Minutes/FBN1-2: 1889–1944. SOAS/WMMS/Burma/Correspondence/FBN1-3: 1886–1945. SOAS/MMS/China & Burma General/Correspondence/FBN4-5: 1938–45. SOAS/MMS/Burma/Box 1286: 1946–50, Uncatalogued/Temporary Boxes: T.63, T.170 and T.300, MRP/Boxes 2-6D, Firth, Mackley, Skinner, Bestall and Willans Papers; Report on Upper Chindwin Tour, Vincent, Reed and Saya U Hla Gyaw, 1946. Myanmar Methodist Church Conference Office, Mandalay Statistical Returns 2006/7.

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BI BLI O G RA P H Y

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Myanmar National Archives Department: Yangon (MNA) File, 406/4C: Letters, from U Ba Aye (Kyangyin) to U Hla DC in Henzada, 22 March 1947. Box 18/File 2-P/271/1-15(A): Intelligence Reports/Rangoon Police, 1947. File 187/180/1949/RI: Reports, SDO Monywa/Pakokku/Gangaw. File 16/Accession-27/1/11/Box 1, foreign religious missions in Burma (memorandum 118FMD48). File 3/1718/1951/2A-9/Box 52, Religious Affairs: Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Myitkyina: No. 2A-9. Memo 2281/1M and 76K A: 1951. Oxford University: Bodleian Library SPG Missionary Records/Box 1/ File D548/18: SPG Personnel in Burma. University of Manchester: John Rylands Library Meth. Arch/Pa/1892.23: Henry S. Lunn, The inner history of the Wesleyan Missionary controversy, 1913.26: Report of the Wesleyan Methodist Centenary Fund of the WMMS.

Reports Conference of British Missionary Societies: Emergency Meeting of Burma Group, Report. 6 April 1966. Government of Burma Intelligence Bureau Report: Burma during the Japanese Occupation, Simla, 1943. Winston, W.R. and Brown, J. ‘New Mission in Upper Burma: A First Report for the Wesleyan Methodist Church’, 1887.

Memoirs, journals, interviews Bishop, Rev. Edward A. ‘Leaving Burma for Good: The Last Years of the Missionaries’, unpublished Journal, 2006. Wolfensberger, G.H. ‘Multiplying the Loaves: The Bible in Mission and Evangelism, a Bible Month in a Burmese Town’ (undated). Record of oral interviews conducted by the author in Mandalay, July 2007.

Newspapers and periodicals Burma Today, June 1945. Forward, 1965. The Times, 21 August 1893–18 January 1906.

Published primary and secondary sources Adas, Michael. The Burma Delta: Economic Development and Social Change on an Asian Rice Frontier, 1852–1941. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974.

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BI BLI O G R A P H Y

Adas, Michael. Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Albrow, M. The Global Age: State and Society beyond Modernity. Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996. Allen, Louis. Burma: The Longest War 1941–45. London: Phoenix Press, 1984. Allott, Anna, J. Inked Over, Ripped Out: The Burmese Storytellers and the Censors. Bangkok: Silkworm, 1993. Ashcroft, Bill, Griffiths, Gareth and Tiffin, Helen. The Post Colonial Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 1995. Aung Thwin, Michael. ‘Parochial Universalism, Democracy, Jihad and the Orientalist Image of Burma: The New Evangelism’, Pacific Affairs, 74:4 (2001–2), 483–505. Aye Kyaw, U. The Voice of Young Burma. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1993. Ba Maw Breakthrough in Burma. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972. Badgley, John H. ‘Burma’s Political Crisis’, Pacific Affairs, 31:4 (1958), 336–351. Badgley, John H. ‘Burma’s Military Government: A Political Analysis’, Asian Survey, 2:6 (1962), 24–31. Badgley, John H. Politics among the Burmans: A Study of Intermediary Leaders. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1970. Baker, Archibald G. ‘Twenty-Five Years of Thought Concerning Protestant Foreign Missions’, Journal of Religion, 6:4 (1926), 384–402. Ballard, Martin. White Man’s God: Extraordinary Story of Missionaries in Africa. Westport, CT: Greenwood World 2008. Barker, F., Hulme, P. and Iversen, M. Colonial Discourse, Post-Colonial Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994. Barton, J.L. ‘The Modern Missionary’, Harvard Theological Review, 8:1 (1915), 1–17. Bates, H.E. The Purple Plain. London: Methuen, 2006. Bayly, C. Rangoon (Yangon) 1939–49: The Death of a Colonial Metropolis. Cambridge Centre for South Asian Studies, Occasional Paper No. 3, 2003. Bayly, Christopher and Harper, Tim. Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia 1941–1945. London: Allen Lane, 2004. Becka, Jan. The National Liberation Movement in Burma during the Japanese Occupation Period (1941–1945). Prague: Oriental Institute in Academia, 1983. Beckerlegge, O. The United Free Methodist Churches: A Study in Freedom. London, Epworth Press, 1957. Bigandet, P.A. An Outline of the History of the Catholic Burmese Mission from the Year 1720 to 1857. Bangkok: White Orchid Press, 1995. Bigelow, Lee, S. ‘The 1960 Election in Burma’, Far Eastern Survey, 29:5 (1960), 70–74. Birtwhistle, N.A. ‘Methodist Missions’, in A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain, Vol. 3, ed. R.E. Davies, A.R. George and E.G. Rupp. London: Epworth Press, 1983.

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Bradford, Amory, H. ‘The Missionary Outlook’, The Biblical World, 13:2 (1899), 79–87. Brant, Charles and Mi Mi Khaing. ‘Missionaries among the Hill Tribes of Burma’, Asian Survey, 1:1 (1961), 44–51. Broomhall, A.J. Hudson Taylor and China’s Open Century. Sevenoaks: Hodder & Stoughton, 1981. Brown, Ian. ‘Tax Remission and Tax Burden in Rural Lower Burma during the Economic Crisis of the Early 1930s’, Modern Asian Studies, 332 (1999), 383–403. Brown, Ian. ‘The Economic Crisis and Rebellion in Rural Burma in the Early 1930s’, in Growth, Distribution and Political Change: Asia and the Wider World, ed. Ryoshin Minami, Kwan S. Kim and Malcolm Falkus, London: Macmillan, 1999. Brown, Ian. A Colonial Economy in Crisis: Burma’s Rice Cultivators and the World Depression of the 1930s. London: Routledge Curzon, 2005. Butwell, Richard. ‘The Four Failures of U Nu’s Second Premiership’, Asian Survey, 2 (March 1962), 3–11. Butwell, Richard. ‘U Nu’s Second Comeback Try’, Asian Survey, 9:11 1(969), 868–876. Butwell, Richard. ‘Ne Win’s Burma: At the End of the First Decade’, Asian Survey, 12:10 (1972), 901–912. Butwell, Richard and von der Mehden, Fred. ‘The 1960 Election in Burma’, Pacific Affairs, 33:2 (1960), 144–157. Cady, John F. History of Modern Burma. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1958. Cain, Peter and Hopkins, Tony. British Imperialism 1688–2000. London: Pearson Education, 2002. Callahan, Mary P., ‘Cracks in the Edifice? Military–Society Relations in Burma since 1988’, in Burma Myanmar: Strong Regime, Weak State?, ed. Morten B. Pedersen, Emily Rudland and Ronald J. May. London: C. Hurst 2000. Carey, Peter. Burma: The Challenge of Change in a Divided Society. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997. Carr, E.H. What is History? London: Macmillan, 1961. Census of Burma 1911, Delhi: Manas Publications, 1986 (First printed, Rangoon: Superintendent Government Printing, 1912). Chakravarti, N.R. The Indian Minority in Burma: The Rise and Decline of an Immigrant Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. Charney, M.W. Powerful Learning: Buddhist Literati and the Throne in Burma’s Last Dynasty, 1752–1885. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. Charney, M.W. A History of Modern Burma. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009. Chubb, H.J. and Duckworth, C.L.D. Irrawaddy Flotilla Company. Greenwich: National Maritime Museum, Maritime Monographs, 1973. Clark, C.M. The Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia, 1728–1941. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.

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Page numbers in bold type refer to a photograph. Page numbers in italics refer to a table. Acheson, Mrs 113–14 Acheson, Rev. Robert E. 33, 124n.34, 207 World War II 13n.3, 114, 119, 120, 121, 122, 125n.42, 128, 137 Adcock, Rev. Bert 32, 33, 206 Africa, Southern 9 Aggamahâ Pandita 80 agriculture 46–7, 49, 140, 174, 186n.4 aid programmes 174, 186n.3 alcohol 54, 64, 140, 156 All Burma Students’ Union (ABSU) 52 America 147–8 American Baptist Mission (ABM) 10, 11, 42, 46–7, 139, 156, 178 and Methodist missionaries 20–1, 32 schools 63, 96, 97, 101, 105, 108n.78, 109n.83 see also Baptists American Methodists 10, 20, 22, 84, 166, 172n.81, 182 American Peace Corps 178 An, Rev. U 33, 39n.105, 48, 62, 70n.10 Angarika Dharmapala, U 82 Anglicans 9, 10, 12, 96 Anglo-Burmese Tin 178 animists 10, 11, 84, 163 Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) 141, 148, 154n.65 Pyidaungsu Party (Clean AFPFL Party) 148, 149, 154n.65, 154n.69 Arakan 56n.26, 154n.69

Asia Foundation 178, 186n.3 Athins 50, 81, 86 Attlee, Clement 142 Aung San, General 52, 140, 141, 142–3, 158 Aung San Suu Kyi, Daw 189, 190, 191 Aung Shwe, Brigadier 150, 154n.74 Aungban 95, 169n.12, 169n.14 Aye Kyaw, U 100 Aye Zin, Daw 48, 158, 169n.22 Ba, Saya 64, 71n.33, 137 Ba Aye, U 140 Ba Htun, U 129, 133 Ba Maung, Saya U 66, 129, 133 Ba Maw, Dr 51, 102, 106, 141 Ba Ohn, Rev. U 151n.15, 156, 168–9n.9, 182, 185, 187n.48, 187n.49, 199n.23, 199nn.23–4 photograph 183, 193 Ba Pyon, U 132, 135n.27, 139 Ba Swe, U 148, 154n.63, 154n.65, 154n.69 Ba Thoung, Thakin 51 Ba Yin, U 94–6, 155 Bailey Hostel 67, 180, 184 Bain, Miss Ruth (later Mrs Ivan Homer) 186n.7, 207 Bangalore Synod 121 Bank of China 178 Bank of Communications 178 Baptists 9, 10, 11, 18n.49, 32, 86, 111–12, 124n.22, 156 churches 32, 171n.63 schools 63, 96, 97, 101, 105, 108n.78, 109n.83 see also American Baptist Mission (ABM)

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Bastin, Miss Margaret (later Mrs Cowell) 172–3n.94, 207 Bates, H.E., The Purple Plain 135n.30 Bateson, Rev. Joseph 2, 13n.3, 22, 35n.23, 205 Becka, Jan 54 Benares 121 Bernard, Sir Charles 21 Bestall, Mrs 41 Bestall, Rev. A.W. 26, 26, 29, 32, 36n.34, 37n.55, 38n.72, 70n.4, 196 biographical details 33, 35n.31, 39n.106, 205 building projects 23–4, 75, 195 and proselytism 25, 30, 31, 75, 84 and public health 66, 68 and schools 63, 75, 96 Bhamo xvif, 21, 22, 34n.6 Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society (BCMS) 10, 121, 165, 188n.73 Bin Yin, Saya 131 Bishop, Mrs Barbara (née Chandler) 180, 186n.5 Bishop, Rev. Edward 148, 166, 174, 181, 183, 195 biographical details 171n.54, 186n.5, 187n.38, 207 military rule 176, 177–8, 179–81, 185 Bisseker, Rev. Tilden Boyns 30, 68, 72n.82, 76, 199n.30, 205 black market 140, 148, 167, 174, 176 Blakeway-Smith, Mrs Sandy 168, 172n.73 Blakeway-Smith, Rev. David 171n.54, 207 Bo Zoung, U 159, 170n.30 Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation 45, 70n.19, 106–7n.12, 114 Books and Publications Act (1898) 56n.30 Booth, Mr 85

Boyce, Mrs F. 33, 206 Boys Training Institution 23 Bradford, Mrs 29 Bradford, Rev. Edgar J. 30, 31–2, 38n.92–3, 69, 76, 96, 195, 205 building projects 84–5, 90–1n.85-7, 94 and Chin people 84–5, 90n.85 Brayton, ‘Father’ 20 Britain 78, 110, 156 and Burma 1, 21, 43–5, 50, 56n.25–6, 141–2, 152n.31, 154n.73 Separation of Burma and India 51, 58n.62 intelligence 55n.17, 122, 127n.108 support for missionary work 3, 77, 88n.31, 90n.85 see also colonialism British and Foreign Bible Society (B&FBS) 27, 34, 112–13, 136, 151n.4 British Army 112 British Council 178, 186n.3 British Information Service 178 Brown, Rev. John 20, 21, 22, 34n.4 Brown-Moffett, Rev. W. 128, 129 Broxholme, Rev. Derek 170n.54, 180, 207 ‘Buddha’s Social Gospel’ 82 Buddhism 5, 16n.29–30, 21, 22, 65, 82, 150 Buddhist nationalism 44, 45–52, 56n.30–1, 75, 76, 79–83, 99–105, 109n.85–9, 152n.23 European Buddhists 80–1, 89n.52 military rule 177, 186n.15 ‘modernist’ 45, 81–2, 86 Nat-worship 75, 88n.12 numbers 10–11, 18n.49 Sangha 5, 16n.28, 43, 51, 81 sayadaws 80, 81, 85 schools 42, 79, 82, 94, 97, 99 thug(g)yis 5–6, 16n.30, 94 Buddhism and Christianity 147, 150 Baptists 105, 109n.83

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and Christian schools 80, 82, 86, 89n.51, 94, 100–1, 105, 109n.83, 184 converts to Buddhism 80–1, 84, 89n.52, 89n.55, 163 Methodism 47, 58n.58, 85–6, 91n.106, 97, 99, 155, 158, 197 Christian converts 25, 30, 31, 36n.48–9, 61–2, 72n.55–7, 75–9, 88–9n.41, 155, 167 cooperation 64, 94, 194 opposition 78–9, 82–3, 85–7, 89n.44–5, 150, 163 name-calling 130, 132, 133, 135n.31 World War II 111, 130, 131, 132 building projects 3, 23–5, 36nn.39–44, 84 Bestall, Rev. A.W. 23–4, 75, 195 Bradford, Rev. Edgar J. 84–5, 90–1n.85-7, 94 funding 23–4, 36n.40, 36n.42, 36n.44, 90n.85 maintenance 8–9 renovation work 156–7, 169n.12 schools 23, 24, 25, 31, 36n.40, 36n.51, 92, 106n.4, 106n.11 Thomas, Rev. Thomas W. 24, 106n.11 Vickery, Rev. William 31, 38n.88 Winston, Rev. W.R. 22–3, 24, 27, 36n.43, 92, 106n.4 Bunn, Mr 66 Burma 2, 5, 16n.26, 42–3, 55n.19–22, 189, 198n.6 and Britain 1, 21, 43–5, 50, 56n.25–6, 141–2, 152n.31, 154n.73 Separation of Burma and India 51, 58n.62 and China 190, 198n.6 Civil War 12, 143–8, 153–4n.62, 153n.45, 153nn.48–9 and colonialism see colonialism economy 45, 49–50, 51, 58n.66, 150, 190, 198n.11

independence 82, 128, 141–3, 152n.31 and India 44–5, 51, 56n.34, 57n.38–9, 57nn.49–50, 58n.62, 136 see also ethnic minorities Japanese occupation 128–34 military rule 174–86, 189 national constitution 174, 189, 190, 199n.19 World War II 12, 67, 110–23, 128–34, 136 see also Buddhism; Burmese government; Burmese people Burma Civil Affairs Service (CAS(B)) 122, 136, 151n.4, 151n.5 Burma Communist Party (BCP) 144–5, 147 Burma Independence Army (BIA) 129–30, 131, 132, 134n.13 Burma Methodist Property Trust 157, 166, 169n.18 Burma Road 111, 123n.8 Burmah Oil Corporation (BOC) 45, 52, 53–4, 59n.93, 119, 135n.22, 186n.3 Burmanisation programme 177–8 Burmese Communist Party 178 Burmese government government grants 25, 36n.40, 42, 65, 66, 157, 182 schools 93, 96–7, 98, 100, 107n.34 and missionaries 161, 165, 180 troops (Yebaws) 146, 153nn.51–4 Burmese monarchy 10, 16n.32, 39n.109, 43, 44, 56nn.25–6 Burmese people Burmese ministers 33, 39n.105, 129, 164–5, 166, 168, 171n.70, 181–2 and Methodist missionaries 155, 156, 158–9, 161, 167, 170n.28, 196

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Burmese people (cont.) Christians 46, 113, 129–34, 156, 158–9, 170n.28, 196 and colonialism 21, 32, 35n.17, 42–3, 46, 158, 197 and conversion 75, 77, 78, 196 religious affiliation 9–10, 18n.49, 46, 74–87 and schools 32, 44–5, 76, 104 Bush, Miss E. 34, 114, 115–16, 121, 127n.96, 206 Butt, Miss Nora 30, 33, 39n.107, 67, 195, 205 Carlton Cinema, Monywa 181 caste system 77 censorship 64–5, 71n.34–35, 174, 177 Ceylon 15n.17, 78 Chalhuana, Rev. 182, 185, 187n.44 Chan Tun Aung, U 148, 154n.66 Chapman, Mrs 115 Chapman, Rev. Clement 13n.3, 31, 32, 51–2, 85, 110, 122, 123, 155 biographical details 38n.91, 205 health 26, 33, 37n.57, 68, 122 and schools 98, 101–2 World War II 12, 111–21, 126n.74 Indian party 119–20, 126n.85 Chatterjee, Bankim Chandra 45, 46 Chauk xvif, 34, 110, 129, 131, 169n.12, 169n.19, 194 Civil War 143, 147 oil workers 52–4, 59n.93, 160 World War II 112–13, 119, 139 Chiang Kai Shek 111, 143 Childe, Rev. Donald 157, 159, 160, 164, 165, 166, 167, 170n.37, 182 Chin people 6, 35n.29, 84–5, 129, 147, 154n.69, 167 church membership 157, 163–4, 169n.25, 172n.87, 191–2 converts 11, 86, 163, 164, 166–7

ministers 33, 165, 166 schools 90n.85, 184 see also Khongsais; Lushais; Tahan China 78, 110–11, 123n.8, 143, 176, 190, 191, 198n.6 China Inland Mission (CIM) 21, 34n.6 Chindwin 24, 34, 46, 193, 194 Chindwin River project 84–5, 91nn.86–0 Chinese Authority 113 Chinese Communist Party 178 Chinese people (minority group) 84, 132, 168, 178, 191, 199n.20 Chit, Ma 62, 70n.12 Chit, U 129, 131 Chit Maung, U 152n.23, 154n.63, 179 Chit May, Daw 129, 132, 135n.30 Chit Po, U 48, 133, 134n.17 Chittagong 115 cholera 26, 27, 31, 68, 69, 113, 116, 120, 127n.92 Chopra’s Department Store 175 Christian Literature Society 161 Christian Socialists 82 Christianity 46, 54, 75 and Buddhism see Buddhism, and Christianity see also Burmese people, Christians Chuni Lal 88n.39, 119, 121 church collections 49, 147 church membership 4, 10, 54, 77–8, 172n.83, 191–2 Burmese Buddhist 78, 85, 157, 158, 163, 169n.19, 169n.25 Chin people 163–5, 169n.25, 172n.87, 191–2 Khongsai 157, 164, 191–2 Lushais 129, 157, 163–5, 166–8, 169n.19, 185, 191–2 growth 33, 77, 157–8 Hualngo people 171n.63, 191 and leprosy 66, 67, 72n.55

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Mandalay 157, 166, 169n.19, 172n.87, 191–3, 193 Tahan Area 166, 173n.99, 191–2 Church Missionary Society (CMS) 3, 11, 14n.7 Church Trust land 194, 199n.24 cinema 64–5, 71n.34–35, 178, 181 Cleaver, Miss Florence 147, 159, 160, 183, 185, 187n.38, 195, 207 biographical details 34, 39n.107 World War II 112, 114, 115–16, 121, 125n.57 Cochrane, Rev. W.W. 80 Colgate family 11, 101, 108n.64 colonialism 2–8, 46, 189, 200n.34 anticolonialism 50–1, 54, 76, 130 and convertion 74–5, 101 and missionaries 8, 9, 10, 17nn.42–3, 25–6, 61, 165–6, 195, 196 amongst missionaries 29–30, 38n.82, 61 and Burmese ministers 2, 196 and Burmese people 21, 32, 35n.17, 158, 197 and colonial officials 2, 4, 40–4, 54n.3, 101 hypocrisy 12, 19n.57 post-colonial attitudes 2, 160, 162–3, 176, 189, 194, 195 schools 8–9, 32, 44–5, 62, 94, 97 vulnerability 136, 150n.2 Comaroff, Jean and John 2, 8, 12, 17n.43, 195 communism 143, 144, 148, 149 Conscience Clause 100 Constituent Assembly 190 converts 7, 10–11, 18n.51 Buddhists to Christianity 25, 30, 31, 75–9, 86–7, 88–9n.41, 167, 184 and Buddhist families 36n.48–9, 61–2 Burmese people 75, 77, 78, 196

Chin people 11, 86, 163, 163–4, 166–7 Christians to Buddhism 80–1, 84, 89n.52, 89n.55, 155, 163 and colonialism 74–5, 101 India 18n.51, 77, 78 leprosy sufferers 66, 67, 72nn.55–7, 92 from margins of society 7, 74, 77–8 Cowell, Rev. Leslie 167, 170n.54, 172–3n.94, 183, 185, 187n.38, 195, 207 Cowles, Miss E. 207 Cox, Jeffery 8–9 Craddock, Sir Reginald 41, 67, 82 Crane, Rev. 124n.22 Crosthwaite, Sir Charles 6, 21 cyclone Nargis 190, 198n.11 Dabey, Mr and Mrs 117, 126n.70 dacoits 43, 119, 140, 147, 156 dancing 5, 64, 164, 171n.67 Dawson, Miss Jennie see Leigh, Mrs Jennie (née Dawson) Dawson’s Bank 139, 151n.16 democracy 4, 17, 190 demonetarisation 179–80 Denkunga, Rev. U. 129 Dhammaloka, U 80 disease 68, 69, 120 see also individual diseases dishonesty 24–5, 36n.42–3 divorce 62, 164 Dobama Asiayone 51, 52, 54, 60n.101 doctors 68, 69, 72n.89 doolies (hammocks) 116, 125n.60 Douglas, Gordon (Bhikku Ashoka) 89n.55 drug trade 167, 190, 191, 192, 198n.10 D’Silva, Thomas Covis 30–1, 96 Dutta, Dr 177–8 Dyarchy 46, 57n.51, 58n.62 dysentery 28, 119, 122

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Early, Rev. Gordon 32, 199n.30, 205 earthquakes 47, 157 East Asiatic Burma Oil 178 East India Company 12 Eindawa Pagoda 79, 104 elections 148, 149, 154n.64, 154n.69, 189, 190, 197n.5 employment 32, 45, 50 English Club 62, 115 ethnic minorities 198n.8 Chinese 84, 132, 168, 178, 191, 199n.20 Indians 21, 50, 52, 54, 85, 86, 106, 110 migrant workers 21, 54, 59n.93, 83–4 Eurasians 62–4, 70n.15 Europeans 53, 110, 113 evacuation xvif, 110–23, 124n.21, 124n.28, 125n.51, 126n.79, 136 exchange rates 25, 36n.45, 190, 198n.11 Falam Area xvif, 191, 192 Falières, Bishop 138 famine 49 Father Lafon Orphanage 145 First Aid Group 133 Firth, Mrs May 48, 115, 144 Firth, Rev. George Eric 33, 48, 53, 110, 112, 150, 157, 159 biographical details 60n.94, 206 Civil War 144–6 personality 195, 196 World War II 112, 114, 115, 116, 117, 126n.74, 127n.101 evacuation 118–19, 120, 121, 126n.79, 126n.86 after World War II 123, 136–9, 155 ‘Five Unity Party’ 83, 90n.72 floods 190 food prices 131, 136, 155, 190 Ford Foundation 178, 186n.3 foreign nationals 178, 187n.26, 198n.8

Foundation Conference (1964) 182 Froud, Rev. Frank 33, 199n.30, 206 Fryer, Sir Frederick 41 Fulbright programme 178, 186n.3 gambling 62, 64, 71n.30 Gandhi, Mahatma 45, 46, 47, 75, 99, 122 Garrad, Rev. 153n.48, 153n.52 gekokujo 129, 134n.6 General Council of Burmese/ Buddhist Associations (GCBA) 51, 81, 85, 89n.44, 99 General Council of the Sangha Sammeggi (GCSS) 82 General Exploration Company 178 Gibbons, Sister E. 34, 206 Gill, Mr 139, 151n.16 Ginsburg, Carlo 7 Gladstone, W.E. 4, 15n.18 Gold Coast 15, 78 Gordon, Rev. 32, 33 Goudie, Rev. William 33, 39n.99, 70n.4, 77 Government of Burma Act (1935) 58n.62 Guyler, Miss Fredericka 33, 48, 206 Haka District 191, 192 Hanna, Miss K. see Mrs Winston Haolet, Rev. 182 Hawtin, Mrs Bertha 48, 114, 115 Hawtin, Rev. John G. 13n.3, 33, 48, 102, 113, 114, 121, 206 health, public 65–8 Hilda, boat 85, 91n.86–7 Hindus 10, 46, 78, 88n.39 HIV/AIDS 190, 192 Hla, Maung 181 Hla Pe, Saya 129, 131–2, 146, 156, 168n.6, 182, 187n.47 Hla Thahaung, Rev. U. 186n.10, 187n.49 Holden, Rev. William 13n.3, 33, 105–6, 161 biographical details 109n.94, 206

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World War II 114, 121, 122, 155 after World War II 136, 151n.4, 155 Hollinshed, Miss Muriel 33, 39n.107, 121, 147, 206 Holmes, Rev. Arthur J. 33, 114, 121, 206 Homalin xvif, 191 Homer, Rev. Ivan 186n.7, 188n.50, 207 Civil War 148, 163, 171nn.54–5 military rule 176, 178, 179, 180, 186n.7 hospitals 41, 69, 113, 132, 156, 169n.10, 178, 192 hostels 67, 101, 180, 182, 184 Hoyle, Rev. Joshua 28–9, 30, 37–8n.69-72, 205 Hsaya San rebellion 49, 50, 58n.66, 58n.74 Hualngo people see Khongsai human rights 190 Hunter, Mark 42 hymns 1–2, 13n.3, 164, 196, 199n.32 Imperial Army (Japanese) 129 imperialism 4, 6, 17n.42, 21, 196 India 44–5, 56n.34, 57n.38–9, 57nn.49–50, 136 Burma missionaries exile 121–2 converts 18n.51, 77, 78 Separation of Burma and India 51, 58n.62 Indian Christian Marriages Act 162 Indian Medical Service 69 Indian migrants 21, 50–2, 54, 85, 86, 106, 110, 114, 177 and Chapman 119–20, 126n.85 Indian National Congress Party 45, 56n.34 Insein 145 Ireland 15n.17, 78 Irrawaddy Flotilla Company 45, 84, 85, 94, 139, 151n.19 Irvine, Rev. J.A.L. 33, 199n.30, 206

Jamaldin, Dr Maurice 67–8, 113, 124n.36, 155, 168n.3, 183, 199n.24 Japan 12, 111, 116, 119, 123n.8, 126n.80, 128–34, 136, 156 atrocities 122, 130, 132, 139 Jehovah’s Witnesses 172n.84 Jenkins, Rev. Ebeneezer E. 11, 20–1, 22, 34n.3 jewellery 179 Job Po Chau, U 39n.105 Johnson, Rev. 178 Johnston, Rev. Cecil 121 Johnston, Sir Harry 2 Jones, Rev. Clifford 170n.54, 172n.73, 207 Joseph Ba Chit, U 180 Judson, Adoniram and Anne 10, 35n.17 Judson College 95, 98, 99 Kachin people 11, 146, 153n.61, 172 Kachin state 150, 154n.69, 161–2, 198 Kalaw xvif, 31–2, 34, 87, 129, 133, 146, 169n.14, 183 Kalemyo xvif, 119, 129, 134n.11 Kalewa xvif, 113, 125n.57, 140 Karen conflict 144–6, 150, 154n.69, 154n.73 Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO) 144–6 Karen National Union (KNU) 143 Karen people 10, 11, 35, 141 Kelly, Rev. E.D. 21, 34n.6 Kempeitai 131, 132, 133, 197 Kettaya, U 79 Khant, Rev. U 33, 48, 62, 70nn.7–8, 170n.28 Kha-Pa-Pa 193, 194 Khin, Daw 48 Khin Maung Than, Dr 168n.3, 193 Khin Maung Tim, U 174–5 Khin Nyunt, General 190, 199n.17 Khin U, Ma 137 Khin Ye, Daw 196–7

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Khin Yi, Daw 52, 53 Khongsai 157, 164, 166, 167, 168, 169n.19 Hualngo people/Khongsais 164, 171n.63, 172, 182, 191 Kin, Maung 61 Kin, U 79 Kinchin, Rev. F.A. 33, 114, 121, 122, 146, 153n.56, 161, 206 Kindat xvif, 31 Kingswood School, Kalaw 146, 183 Klaipo, Saya 130, 134n.17, 155 Ko Hla Shwe, U 105 Kodaw Hmain, Thakin 82 Kodicara, Solomon 26, 30, 61, 70n.4 Kuomintang (KMT) 143, 144, 147 Kyangin 140 Kyaukse xvif, 23, 30–1, 68, 86, 110–11, 176, 194, 196–7 and Buddhism 80, 82, 85, 88–9n41, 94 church membership 85, 157, 169n.19, 172n.87 Civil War 141, 146, 155 holiday houses 139, 151n.14 Mission House 113, 139 schools 92–4, 95, 100, 103, 106–7n.12 school for the deaf 168 slojd training workshop 31, 38n.88, 106, 133, 139, 151n.13 Wesley Boys Anglo-Vernacular High School 92–4, 106, 139 Wesley Girls Anglo-Vernacular High School 112, 124n.28, 139, 153n.58 World War II 112, 129, 132–3, 134, 139, 140 kyaungtaiks 86, 89n.45 Kyaw Nyein, U 148, 154n.63, 154n.69 land prices 23, 35n.27, 36n.33 Land Rover, Monywa Circuit 176, 186nn.10–11 landowners 49, 50, 58n.69

Lawley, Miss Lily (later Mrs Lewis) 33, 48, 206 Leigh, Margaret 123, 127n.117 Leigh, Mrs Jennie (née Dawson) 33, 48, 123, 127n.113, 206 Leigh, Rev. John Lowes 13n.3, 33, 48, 58n.59, 114, 121, 123, 127n.113, 206 leprosy 27, 65–8, 72n.55–7, 74–5, 78, 86, 88n.39, 122, 168, 173n.100 Letpanchaung 191, 192 Lewis, Rev. Ewart 33, 48, 199n.30, 206 Lezin xvif, 129, 132, 158, 171n.57 Liberalism 4, 15n.18 libraries 67, 178 Linlithgow, Marquis of 42 literacy 5, 16n.26, 56n.33, 184 Local Trust Association 167 londwins (canoes) 116, 125n.60 Lonpo 86 looting 121, 131, 133, 145, 155, 157 Lushai Christian Convention 86 Lushais church membership 129, 157, 163–5, 166–8, 169n.19, 185, 191–2 ministers 33, 34, 165, 182, 199n.23 see also Chin people; Tahan Ma Lay, Ma (Ma Tin Hlaing) 65, 155 Macaulay’s schools 75, 88n.11 MacGregor, Allan Bennet (Ananda Maitreya) 80 Mackley, Miss Dorothy 34, 40, 54n.4, 110, 153n.48, 207 World War II 112, 113, 115, 119, 121, 124n.28 Mahazayabon, Mandalay 130–1, 133, 137–8, 151n.9, 155 Maingdaungphai xvif, 168, 173n.101 Maingy, Mr 40, 54n.2 malaria 26, 31

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Mandalay xvif, 21, 43, 177, 191, 194 and Buddhism 81, 85, 104–5, 109n.85 church membership 157, 166, 169n.19, 172n.87, 191–2, 193 Civil War 141, 144–6, 153n.45, 153nn.48–9 converts 25, 86 disease 68, 120 Japanese occupation 125n.57, 129, 130, 131, 133 Mission House 130, 137, 145–6, 151n.9–10, 159, 170n.30 and nationalism 46–50, 51, 102, 103 schools 94, 96, 97, 101–2, 106n.5, 106n.12, 182 Baptist schools 96, 103, 108n.78, 109n.83 Boys Anglo-Vernacular High School 96, 102, 106, 113, 117, 134n.17, 137, 169n.18, 184–5 and Buddhism 97, 102, 105–6, 184 Girls Boarding School 23, 92 Roman Catholic schools 63, 96 see also Wesley Girls AngloVernacular High School, Mandalay Wesley Church (St Luke’s) 72n.55, 130, 138, 146, 147, 153n.54, 157, 192 World War II 111–12, 113, 114, 115, 116–18, 120, 126n.76, 127n.93 after World War II 136, 137–8, 140 Mandalay Civil Club 41 Mandalay Civil Hospital 117, 145 Mandalay Leper Home 25, 41, 65–8, 71n.41–46, 72n.60, 72n.73, 151n.11, 170n.30, 173n.100 converts 66, 88n.39, 92 World War II 113, 118, 137

Mandalay Methodist District Children’s Home 156 Mann, Rev. Ivor 170n.54, 207 Maoism 178 market traders 176, 179 marriage 34 Christian-Buddhist 61, 62 Methodist 28, 29, 37n.66, 38n.76–8, 162, 164, 166, 194 Marxism 51, 52, 54, 82, 140–1, 152n.23 Maung Gyi, Sir 100, 108n.55, 108n.66 Maung Gyi, U 156 Maung Maung, U 81, 148, 150, 154n.74 Mawlaik xvif, 129, 140, 152n.22, 157, 169n.12, 194 May Oung, U 79 Maymyo xvif, 41, 101, 114, 131, 134n.18, 138, 139, 172n.87, 194 Meiktila 139 Merrick, Miss Anna 32, 33, 39n.107, 48, 114, 115, 121, 125n.56, 195, 205 Methodism 3–4, 129 American Methodists 10, 20, 22, 84, 166, 172n.81, 182 autonomy 9, 161, 165–6, 167, 181–2, 187n.48, 188n.50 and Buddhism see Buddhism and Christianity, Methodism Burmese Christians see Burmese People, Christians church membership see church membership rules and customs 32, 38n.97, 164–5, 168 marriage 28, 29, 37n.66, 38n.76–8, 162, 164, 166, 194 Methodist Layman’s Missionary Movement 170n.37 Methodist Reconstruction Fund 157 Methodist Recorder 28, 85, 110, 135n.30

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Methodist Relief Fund 163 Methodist Training College 192 Middleton-West, Colonel 165 Mindat District 191, 192 Mindon, King 10, 39n.109, 43, 56n.24 mission houses 139, 155, 157 building projects 23, 24, 31, 36n.40 Kyaukse 113, 139 Mandalay 130, 137, 145–6, 151n.9–10, 159, 170n.30 Monywa 36n.40, 119, 126n.84, 140, 157, 163 Mission to Lepers 65 missionaries 1–2, 3, 14n.7, 20–34 American 3, 11, 20–1, 32, 84 and Britain 3, 77, 88n.31 and Buddhism see Buddhism and Christianity and Burmese people see Burmese people and colonialism see colonialism departure 185–6, 188n.73–4 and expatriates 26, 37n.55 expulsions 10, 178 furloughs 29, 38n.78, 111, 123, 127n.116 and government restrictions 137, 161, 165, 180 health 26–7, 37n.58, 40, 69, 73n.92 personnel problems 27–9, 37n.64, 38n.76–81 political motivation 194–5, 199n.29 stipends and allowances 29, 38n.81, 40, 55n.6, 156, 168n.5 training 4, 11, 19n.55–6, 80, 156, 165, 168, 172n.85 missionary histories and yarns 7, 17n.35 missionary societies 3, 4–5, 14n.7, 15–16n.15-24 Mitchell, Mr and Mrs 118–19 Mizos 18n.51, 191–2, 199n.22 Mogaung 129

Monywa xvif, 1, 24, 68, 144, 147, 163, 194 Buddhists 80, 81, 82, 163 District Superintendent of Police 147, 153n.58 military rule 174–6, 177–9, 180–1 Mission House 36n.40, 118, 119, 126n.84, 140, 157, 163 Monywa Church 26, 36n.44, 132, 181 church membership 157, 163, 169n.19 schools 95, 96, 99, 106–7n.12, 140, 181, 183, 184 Buddhist Middle School, Monywa 82, 97 see also Wesley AngloVernacular High School, Monywa World War II 113, 118, 132, 139–40 Moore, Miss H. 32, 205 Moore, Rev. Douglas 32, 199n.30, 205 morality 61–2, 161–2, 170n.45, 171n.58 sexual immorality 29, 38n.77, 61–2, 64, 85 Morgan, Miss Nesta 207 Morse, Rev. Eugene 162 Morse, Rev. Robert 161–2, 170n.45 Murdoch, Miss Dorothy see Reed, Mrs Dorothy (née Murdoch) Musgrave, Miss Hope 180, 187n.35, 207 Muslims 10, 46, 105, 198n.8 Mya Bu, U 48, 130 Mya Tin, Daw 158 Myanmar National Archives 136, 150n.1 Myanyaung State Post-Primary School 140 Myitkyina xvif, 125n.57, 162 Myobaw xvif, 158 Nahannwe 86 Nakala, Tamu 129

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Narayan Viman Tilak 75 Nation, newspaper 177, 178, 186–7n.20 National Democratic Front 191 National League for Democracy (NLD) 189, 190, 197n.5, 198n.6, 198n.12, 199n.19 National Leprosy Fund 65, 71n.44 National Solidarity Act 182 National Solidarity Associations (NSA) 148, 149, 154n.68 nationalisation 174, 175–6, 178, 185, 186n.3 nationalism Burmese 44, 45–52, 56n.30–1, 75, 76, 79–83, 99–105, 109n.85–9, 152n.23 Indian 45–6, 57n.38–39, 57n.49–50, 136 Nationality Laws 177 Ne Win, General 12–13, 68, 148, 149, 150, 174, 175, 189, 197n.4 New China News Agency 178 New Testament Revision Committee 32, 38n.97 Nga Ba, U 43 Ngwe Wint, Daw 132, 158, 181 Nicholson, Rev. Edgar H. 146, 153n.56, 207 Nietzsche 82 Ninde, Bishop 20, 84 Noble, Rev. W.J. 80, 89n.50, 100 Nu, U 67, 162, 176–7 as Prime Minister 143, 144, 147–50, 154n.65, 154n.73, 174, 177, 186n.19 Nurse, Rev. Claude 171n.54, 180, 207 oil 52–4, 131, 147, 189, 190 Olmstead, Rev. 137, 151n.5 Oppenheimers 178 Orwell, George 40, 70n.15 Ottama, U 46, 57n.45–6, 81, 82

pagodas 79, 89n.44 Pai Bwin, Rev. Maung 33, 48, 70n.5, 85, 86, 119, 132, 140, 156, 180 discrimination 61–2, 170n.28 Pakokku xvif, 23–4, 32, 62, 146–7, 194 Buddhism 78–9, 80, 81, 99, 106 church membership 85, 157, 169n.19 converts 25, 31, 86 public health 68, 69 schools 25, 78–9, 92, 94, 99, 105, 106, 106–7n.12 see also Wesley AngloVernacular High School, Pakokku unrest 51, 80, 81, 103–6 World War II 129, 131, 139, 151n.17 Pakokku Girls’ League 156 Pale, Monywa 86 Paletwa Area 191, 192 Panan 132 Pengelly, Miss Mona 180, 207 People’s Volunteer Organisation (PVO) 143, 144, 145, 146, 152n.39 Pepper, Rev. Anthony T. 60n.100, 207 Perboyre, Sister Mary Gabrielle 162, 170n.46 Perks, Sir R. W. 4, 15n.18 Phillips, Rev. Thomas Gray 27, 30, 31, 37n.62, 80, 94, 96, 195, 205 Pillay, T.K. 141–2 plague 27, 31, 68, 69 Po Chaw, Maung 31 Po Tun, Rev. U 48 career 33, 83, 111, 116, 117, 155 Japanese occupation 128, 129, 130, 131, 134, 134n.19 and missionaries 158–60, 170n.28, 170nn.34–6, 170n.36, 196 personal details 62, 66–7, 70n.11, 135n.36, 151n.5, 155

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Po Wine, U 129, 134n.11, 140, 152n.22, 168n.6 pongyis and Christianity 47, 61, 76, 78, 79, 80, 83, 97, 130 military rule 180, 181, 186n.15 nationalism 51–2, 78, 79, 81–2, 83, 85, 102, 104, 158, 177 Porter, Miss Hilda 112, 124n.24 Pratt, Mr Justice Sheldon 54n.3, 63, 70n.18 Presbyterians 10, 84, 164, 172n.84 Press Act (1910) 56n.30 press coverage 56n.30, 102, 157, 169n.17, 177, 186n.19–20 Price Hughes, Rev. Dr Hugh 4, 15n.18 prisoners 181 political 190, 198n.7, 199n.17 Prome xvif, 65, 143 proselytism 9–11, 40, 75–6, 85, 158, 168, 181, 193–4 ‘evangelism, aggressive’ 86, 91n.96 in schools 75, 76, 100–1, 183, 184 prostitution 32, 64, 71n.30 Protestants 3, 9, 18n.49 Pu, U 105 Pu Lay, Ma 156, 168–9n.9, 193 public health 3, 9, 65–9 Puttaing 132 Pyaw, Rev. Maung 62 Pyawbwe xvif, 31, 33, 68, 84, 139, 144, 147, 194 and Buddhism 79, 82, 85, 97 morality 64, 71n.30 schools 31, 82, 95, 97, 100, 106–7n.12, 139 Wesleyan Anglo-Vernacular School 94, 95, 97, 100, 139 Pyidaungsu Party (Clean AFPFL Party) see Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL)

rabies 27, 69 racial problems 7, 17n.42, 57n.42, 62, 86 cultural subordination 9, 53, 155, 158–60, 165–6, 170n.28, 170n.36, 196 between Indians and Burmans 45, 47, 50, 52, 85, 86 radios 168 railways 31, 83, 139, 144, 153n.45, 171n.55 railway employees 12, 42, 106–7n.12, 152n.40 Rance, Sir Hubert 141, 142, 143 Rangoon xvif, 10, 51, 69, 83–4, 90n.73, 141, 147, 182 World War II 111, 112, 114, 116, 136–7 Rangoon Corporation 113, 118 Rangoon Telegraphic Company 113 Rangoon University Act 98 Rangoon University Council 41, 101–2 Rattenbury, Rev. Harold B. 110, 111, 114, 123 Red Cross 137, 151n.6 Red Flag communists 141, 144, 145 Reed, Mrs Dorothy (née Murdoch) 34, 114, 116, 124–5n.40, 153n.48, 206 Reed, Rev. Denis 33, 48, 157, 163, 183, 195–6 and Autonomy 187n.48 biographical details 124–5n.40, 126n.66, 160, 206 and Childe, Rev. Donald 157, 160, 164–7, 170n.37 Civil War 144, 145, 153n.48 and cultural subordination 53–4, 158–9, 160, 165–6 military rule 179, 185 World War II 12, 114, 116, 117, 118–19, 121, 126n.86, 139–40, 155 Rees, Rev. David 161–2, 170n.45

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refugees 111, 113, 114, 115, 120, 127n.92, 127n.93, 198n.9 Mrs Shaw’s refugee camp 116, 119, 125n.62, 126n.80 religious institutions, registration 180 Revolutionary Council 174, 177, 178, 180 Rezua District 191, 192 rice 58n.55, 115, 189, 198n.6 prices 46, 47, 49, 58n.55, 131, 136, 155, 174, 190 Richmond College 4, 11–12 Robertson, Miss Margaret 33, 39n.107, 48, 160, 170n.35, 195, 206 World War II 114, 115, 121, 125n.56 Roman Catholics 9–10, 11, 162, 178, 180 schools 63, 96 St John’s Roman Catholic Leper Asylum, Mandalay 65, 66, 137–8, 151n.11 Rose, Rev. A.J. 10, 20–1 Roy, Dr 66, 67, 72n.65, 113 Russell, Rev. Maurice H. 32, 33, 199n.30, 205 Salin xvif, 31, 34, 88–9n.41, 94, 95, 106–7n.12 San Nwe, Rev. U 33, 129, 132–4, 137, 147, 155 Saw, U 102, 106, 111, 141 sawbwas 147 scholarships 184 schools 3, 92–106, 106–7n.12, 157, 169n.14, 182–5 ABC schools 184 Baptist 63, 96, 97, 101, 103, 105, 108n.78, 109n.83 Buddhism and Wesleyan schools 80, 82, 86, 89n.51, 94, 100–1, 104–5, 109n.83, 184 Buddhist schools 42, 79, 82, 94, 97, 99

building projects 24, 25, 31, 36n.40, 36n.51, 90n.85, 106n.11 Winston, Rev. W.R. 23, 92, 106n.4 and Burmese people 32, 44–5, 76, 104–5 and colonialism 8–9, 32, 44–5, 62, 94, 97 for the deaf 168 financing 93, 96–7, 98, 100, 107n.34, 179–80 mixed-race education 62 national schools 45, 52, 96, 99, 100, 194 and nationalisation 174, 185 and proselytism 75, 76, 100–1, 183, 184 pupil numbers 30, 95, 105, 106–7n.12, 188n.69–70 Roman Catholic schools 63, 96 school for the deaf 168 slojd training workshop 31, 38n.88, 106, 133, 139, 151n.13 Sunday schools 53, 97, 107n.20, 158, 184 teachers 96, 98, 184 see also Kyaukse; Mandalay; Monywa; Pakokku; Pyawbwe; Salin Scots Kirk, Rangoon 84, 136 Sein Nyunt, U 181 Sein Tin, U 128, 134n.3 Sein Tun, Maung 137, 151n.5 Sellick, William 63 Sewell, Mrs Joyce (née MortonGeorge) 113, 114, 116, 125n.41, 126n.63 Sewell, Rev. Bernard 33, 48, 113, 114, 116, 121–2, 126n.63, 206 Shan Hills xvif, 31, 84, 85, 86, 106–7n.12 Shan States 10, 148, 154n.69 Shaukka 79

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Shaw, George Bernard 197, 200n.34 Sheldon, Rev. Arthur 30, 33, 68, 69, 98, 100 biographical details 39n.101, 44, 56n.29, 205 and Buddhism 79, 189, 196 chairmanship 33, 44, 69, 77, 88n.34, 98 and converts 77, 158, 189, 196 foresight 12, 44, 77, 104–5, 108n.53, 195, 196 Shepherd, Rev. Vincent 33, 48, 53, 59n.92, 94–5, 101, 122–3, 195, 206 World War II 13n.3, 114, 121, 122, 127n.111 Sherratt, Rev. William 27, 30, 31, 33, 34, 48, 76, 84, 195 biographical details 37n.63, 205 shoes 79, 89n.44 shops 175–6, 179, 186n.6 Shwe Hpi, U 51 Shwechaung school 95, 169n.14 Shwegu school 139 Sierra Leone Methodist Trust 167 Silcock, Rev. Valentine 13n.3, 33, 120, 121, 127n.90, 146, 207 Silverstein, Josef 81, 147, 148, 187n.25 Simon Commission 47, 58n.62 Sind, steamer 118, 126n.77 Skinner, Mrs see Winston, Miss Jessie Skinner, Rev. Francis E. 32, 33, 34, 39n.108, 64, 66, 70n.4, 72n.52, 206 slojd training workshops 31, 38n.88, 106, 133, 139, 151n.13 smallpox 26, 27, 68, 69, 120 Smith, Miss Maeve 34, 48, 79, 206 social class 4, 7, 12, 15n.14, 17n.42, 50, 79 Social Democratic Party 147 social issues 61–9 social projects 168

Society for the Propagation of Buddhism 80 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) 10, 32, 115, 121, 188n.73 Somra Tract xvif, 164, 166, 168, 172n.86, 182, 184 Soper, Lord 15n.14, 199n.29 Soviet Union 176, 178–9, 187n.28 spirit worship 11, 88n.12 sponsorship 90n.85 St John’s Roman Catholic Leper Asylum, Mandalay 65, 66, 137–8, 151n.11 St Luke’s Church, Mandalay 72n.55, 130, 138, 146, 147, 153n.54, 157, 192 church membership 157, 166, 169n.19, 172n.87, 191–2, 193 State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), later State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) 189, 190, 198n.6, 198n.12 Steel Brothers 45, 115, 146, 178 Stocks, Dr Percy 69, 73n.94, 73n.99 street children 192 street-cleaners 78, 88n.39 Suart, Katie 28 subalterns 133, 158, 170n.27 suffering 82 Tahan xvif, 69, 140, 167, 185, 191, 192 church membership 164, 166, 172n.85, 173n.99 see also Chin people; Lushais Tamu xvif, 129, 140, 164, 191, 192 Tanner, Rev. 198n.10 tatmadaw 189, 190 taxation 49, 50, 58n.69, 86, 101, 178 Taylor, Rev. George 48, 199n.30, 206 Teik Tin Ma Gyi, Princess 34, 39n.109 Thadingyut 110–11 Thakin Tin, U 148, 154n.65

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thakins 52, 140, 152n.23 Than Tun, Thakin 141, 143, 144 thathanabaing 43, 81, 90n.65 Thawbita, U 79 Thayer, Alice 46, 47, 58n.55, 103, 109n.79 Thein, U 43 Thein Maung, U 79, 89n.44, 148, 154n.66 Thein Pe Myint, U 46, 52 Thein Than Communist Party 140, 152n.24 Thetkegyin, Monywa 99 Thibaw, King 10, 16n.32, 39n.109, 43, 44, 56n.25–6 Thoburn, Rev. James Mills 10 Thomas, Mrs Agnes (née Shaw) 27, 28, 73n.92 Thomas, Rev. Thomas W. 23, 25, 26, 36n.32, 37n.58, 37n.65, 75, 106n.11, 205 health 24, 26, 27–8 Thompson, Robert 66, 71n.51 Thorne, Susan 2, 7–8, 12, 17n.42, 195 Thuriya, newspaper 56n.32, 81–2 Thwin, U 105 Tilak, Bal Gangadhar 45, 57n.38 Tiloka, U 79 Tin, U 86, 139, 154n.63 Tin Maung Htwe, U 193, 199n.26 Tin Myint, U 182, 184–5, 187n.49 Topping, Sister L. 34, 206 tourism 178 trade unions 141, 143 training ministers 165, 168, 172n.85, 182 missionaries 4, 11, 19n.55–6, 80, 156 transport, public 174 Tuahranga, Rev. 34, 122, 129 tuberculosis 73, 160, 168 Tun Aung Kyaw, U 46 Tun Maung, U 155 Tun Pe, U 137, 186n.19

Turtle, Rev. David 121, 171n.54, 180, 207 typhoid 26, 27, 68 Underwood, Rev. J. England 32, 33, 39n.102, 205 Unilever 186n.3 Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) 190–1 University Boycott 98–9 Upper Burma Club 40, 113 Upper Chindwin 1, 31, 33, 34, 69, 86, 184, 191 see also Chin people USIS project 178 Varney, Mrs 114, 115 Varney, Rev. Reginald 33, 48, 155, 170n.34, 206 World War II 114, 119, 120, 121, 126n.79, 131, 135n.22 Venn, Henry 3 Vickers, Miss Agnes (later Mrs Vickery) 30, 63, 64, 71n.22, 205 Vickery, Rev. William 30–1, 33, 38n.87, 39n.103, 84, 195, 205 Vincent, Jennifer 122 Vincent, Mrs Violet (née Batchelor) 114, 116, 124–5n.40 Vincent, Rev. Stanley 12–13, 33, 48, 123, 139–40, 155, 171n.67, 180 and autonomy 161, 165, 167, 182 biographical details 124–5n.40, 206 personality 160–1, 195 World War II 113, 114, 116, 119, 120, 121, 126n.63, 126n.79, 128 Vulchuka, Rev. 182, 183 wages 53–4, 141, 155, 174, 179–80, 190 Walters, Rev. H. Crawford 25–6, 30, 32, 33, 36–7n.54, 46, 64, 82, 205

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Walton, Rev. John 22, 35n.25 Warwickshire, SS 180 Wathondaya 87 Wavell, General 111 Waymouth, Captain 63, 70n.19 Webb, Rev. Paul 33, 53, 59n.92, 199n.30, 206 Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Mission 10 Wesley, John 3–4 Wesley Anglo-Vernacular High School, Monywa 92, 113, 132, 140, 157, 163 and Buddhist nationalism 102–3, 104, 105 military rule 174, 179–80, 185, 188n.69–70 pupil numbers 95, 188nn.69–70 see also Monywa; schools Wesley Anglo-Vernacular High School, Pakokku 36n.40, 84, 92, 183. see also Pakokku schools and Buddhism 78–9, 101, 102, 103, 106 World War II 113, 131, 139 see also Pakokku; schools Wesley Girls Anglo-Vernacular High School, Mandalay 63–4, 71n.27, 151n.9, 169n.18, 170n.30, 182 and Buddhist nationalism 50, 102, 103 Japanese occupation 130, 137 World War II 110, 113, 114 see also Mandalay, schools Wesley High School Old Boys 99 Wesley Theological Training Institution 156, 168–9n.9, 185 Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (WMMS) 4, 15n.15–17, 32 Methodist Conference 16n.24, 22, 89, 191–2 and autonomy 165, 166, 181–2

Missionary Committee 4, 27, 49, 84, 122 and discipline 29, 158–9 and funding 22–5, 63, 65, 98 and membership numbers 33, 74 Synod 16n.24, 26, 30p, 48 see also Women’s Work (WW) later Ladies Auxilliary West, Bishop George 137, 151n.5, 188n.52 West Midlands District Boys’ Brigade 172n.86 White Flag communists see Burma Communist Party (BCP) Wiatt, Miss Lucy 42, 103–4, 105, 109nn.85–9 Willans, Mrs E. see Bush, Miss E. Willans, Mrs Kitty 34, 39n.111, 48, 73n.92 Willans, Rev. Harold C. 33, 48, 147, 195 biographical details 39n.112, 206 World War II 111, 112–13, 115, 119, 122, 124n.15, 127n.106 and Young 34, 58n.59 Win Tin 199n.17 Winston, Miss Jessie (later Mrs Skinner) 32, 34, 69, 72n.52, 205 Winston, Mrs F. D.(née Miss K. Hanna) 32, 205 Winston, Mrs W. R. 23, 26 Winston, Rev. F.D. 30, 205 Winston, Rev. W.R. 20–4, 26, 27, 30, 64, 65–6, 83–4, 195 biographical details 34n.1, 205 building projects 22–3, 24, 27, 36n.43, 92, 106n.4 colonialism 4, 26, 37n.55, 40 converts 25, 30, 75 and schools 23, 62, 92, 106n.4 Wisara, U 82 Wiseman, Mrs 4, 15n15

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Women’s Work (WW), later Ladies Auxiliary 4, 15n15, 29, 113, 139, 180, 199n.30 missionaries 30, 32, 33–4, 39n.107 Woodward, Rev. Alfred 24, 28, 37n.66–67, 205 World War I 32–3, 42 World War II 12, 67, 110–23, 128–34, 136 attrocities 122, 129, 130, 132, 139 bombing 111, 113, 119, 126n.80 Allied 129, 131, 132, 133, 135n.24 casualties 111, 120 Yamethin xvif, 143, 147 Yangon 192, 193, 194 Yebaw Association 141, 153n.51–4

Yenangyaung xvif, 52, 53, 54, 59n.93 Yesagyo, Pakokku xvif, 30, 46, 87, 132, 139 Ynlaygon, Pyawbwe 86 Young, Rev. J.M. 12, 32, 47–50, 85, 100 biographical details 91n.89, 205 personality 47, 58n.59, 195, 196 World War I 13n.3, 32–3 Young Lushai Christian Association 156 Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA) 79, 89n.44–5, 99 Youth Conferences 185 Yunnan Tibetan Christian Mission (YTCM) 161–2, 170n.45 Ywadan, Pyawbwe 87 Zaw Win Aung, Rev. 193, 199n.23

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