Dilemma of the British Representative to the Burmese Court after the Outbreak of a Palace Revolution in 1866

Abstract

The land-locked kingdom of Burma, though shorn of its territories and war-weary, managed, however, to salvage its wounded pride, and was on the way to recovery soon after the Second Anglo-Burmese War. Its swift recovery was due to the leadership of King Mindon who had ascended the throne during the crucial point in the Anglo Burmese conflict, after deposing the easy-going and inefficient King Pagan, his half-brother. The postwar period in British Burma saw the local administrators facing manifold problems, such as the pressing need for rehabilitation and improvement of commerce. In order to be able to carry out their development plans in the newly-acquired province in Lower Burma1, the administrators there needed a sense of security which they knew could only be derived from having friendly relations with the ruler of the adjacent kingdom of Burma. Fortunately, they found King Mindon a more amiable monarch than his predecessor.2 Yet, despite his friendliness to the British, Mindon had not readily given his approval to the re-establishment of the British Residency at the Burmese capital, which had been withdrawn by the British during the reign of a hostile monarch, King Tharawaddy.3