Burma

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Burma (now officially called the Union of Myanmar) was a province of the Bengal Presidency until the establishment of the Burma Office in 1937 after which it was administered separately until independence in 1948.

Geography

Places in Burma:

History

The British annexed parts of Burmese territory after their victory in the 1st Burma War. Lower Burma was annexed in 1852 after the 2nd Burma War. In 1862, these territories were designated the minor province of British India, British Burma. After the 3rd Burma War in 1885, Upper Burma was annexed, and the following year, the province of Burma in British India was created, becoming a major province in 1897. This arrangement lasted until 1937, when Burma began to be administered separately by the Burma Office and the Secretary of State for India and Burma. Burma achieved independence from British rule on January 4, 1948.

Military

Also see

Trek Out of Burma in 1942

Following the Japanese bombing in 1942, half a million refugees attempted to walk to India. Many died.

  • Koi-Hai website
    • Forgotten Frontier by Geoffrey Tyson, first published 1945, may be downloaded as a pdf from the Koi-Hai website. This book is about the Trek and the help provided by the tea planters of Assam assisting people from North Burma into India.
  • Anglo-Burmese Library - transcriptions and report. Also the list of internees.
  • This India List post and this British Raj post are about a young boy, whose family perished in the Trek Out of Burma, who was given into the care of some Gurkhas and raised as a Gurkha. He was subsequently traced, but had died. The India List post mentions Red Cross records in Geneva, probably those of the ICRC Archives
  • This India List post and this India List post are about books about the Trek Out of Burma. Refer also Planet Burma Book World below.
  • The Elephant Man is about the rescue of refugees by Gyles Mackrell , an Assam tea planter. He mounted an operation to save refugees who were trapped by flooded rivers at the border with India using the only means available to get them across - elephants. Includes YouTube film clip from the Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge
  • The story of Sam and Marg Acomb The War period commences page 28. In 1941 the author escaped from Thailand to Rangoon where he joined the Army in Burma Reserve of Officers. In 1942 he trekked for three weeks out of Burma to India. Subsequently he was assigned as Intelligence Officer in Dibrugahr Assam, Deolali, Ceylon and Bangkok(1944) until he was discharged in August 1946. BYU Digital Collections
  • Listen to a radio interview with Felicity Goodall, author of Exodus Burma. news.bbc.co.uk. Today,Tuesday, 13 December 2011. Details of Exodus Burma, the British Escape Through the Jungles of Death 1942 by Felicity Goodall 2011. Available to buy through Amazon.co.uk from the FIBIS Shop
  • Tales of wartime courage revealed Yorkshire Post Wednesday 11 January 2012
  • Exodus from Burma by Krishnan Gurumurthy, aged 9 in 1942. His father was employed in the Burma Railways and was one of the many Indian working in Burma. amitavghosh.com
  • Burma Diary by Paul Geren published 1943 In 1941 Paul Geren agreed to spend two years at Judson College in Rangoon, Burma, as a short-term missionary under the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. Following the Japanese bombing Professor Geren's classroom became a field hospital as he offered his services as an ambulance driver to Dr. Gordon Seagrave, the famed Burma surgeon. He later trekked to India. From the website ourstory.info

Railways

Records

British Library

  • Baptisms, Marriages and Burials for Burma are included in the Bengal returns (N/1) up to 1936. Records for 1937 to 1959 are in a separate series N/10 with a single index for Burma BMBs.
  • Burma Gazette IOR/V/11/3406-3694 1875-1952.This publication was one of the Government Gazettes which were the official newspapers of the Government of India and its provincial governments where information, such as appointments, promotions,etc was 'gazetted'.

LDS (Mormon)

The LDS film catalogue has the following entries:

Other

  • From the catalogue of the Centre for Jewish History, New York and available through the American Sephardi Federation:
    • Birth Register Book: Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue Rangoon. Published 1979 In English, available from 1896. In Hebrew, available from 1888
    • Death Register Book: Musmeah Yeshua Synagogue Rangoon. Published 1979. Available from 1888. In Hebrew with Sephardi Script.

FIBIS resources

Extracts from "The Private Letters of William Porter, Gunner, 3rd Batt., Madras Artillery (1826-1857) (Mss Eur. G128, British Library)", including time spent in Burma

Economy and business

The leading British firms in Burma were the Burma Oil Company, which controlled the oil industry, Steel Brothers and Company Limited, which worked in oil, rice and general trading business, the Rangoon Electric Tramway and Supply Company Limited, the Anglo-Burma Tin Company , and the Burma Corporation Limited, which operated the Bawdwin Mines.[1]

The book Electric Traction in the Burmese Capital: A History of the Rangoon Electric Tramway and Supply Company, Limited by Robert P Sechler 1981 is available at the National Tramway Museum, Crich Tramway Village, Derbyshire and Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY, USA

Also refer Twentieth century impressions of Burma: its history, people, commerce, industries, and resources by Arnold Wright in Online books below

Recommended Reading

  • The book Old Soldier Sahib by Frank Richards, is about the early 1900s in India and Burma and mentioned in Military reading list. Further reviews can be read in this Victorian Wars Forum thread and on Mark Simner's military history blog. The book was first published in 1936. A further Victorian Wars Forum thread is about a 2005 edition , annotated by Krijnen and Langley, with many footnotes and illustrations. "Each page is annotated to give information on Frank Richards’s friends, his officers, the places where he served in India and Burma, dates, events and the language, for example". Earlier editions are available at the British Library, and the 2005 edition should be also available (although the latter is not in the catalogue).
  • Details of the book A Soldier’s Story-From the Khyber Pass to the Jungles of Burma: The Memoir of a British Officer in the Indian Army 1933-1947 by John Archibald Hislop, edited by Penny Kocher 2010. There is a review by Richard Morgan of A Soldier’s Story in FIBIS Journal Number 26 Autumn 2011, page 52. For details of how to access this article, see FIBIS Journals. The review may also be read in this link, along with other reviews. Available at the British Library

References

  1. ↑ Google Books snippet search result from Joint international business ventures in the Union of Burma, page 18 by U. Tun Thin 1959.

External links

The FIBIS Google Books Library
has books tagged:
Burma

Online Books

Other

  • Adoniram Judson, Ann Judson-Pioneer American Baptist Missionaries to Burma Wholesomewords.org
  • Joseph Valu's World War 2 Burma Diaries
  • Obituary of Reuben Solomon born Rangoon 1921, from the Sydney Morning Herald dated 24 October 2009. He is mentioned in Burmese Nights tajmahalfoxtrot.com
  • De La Salle Brothers in Myanmar
  • "Fire-Hearted Pebbles from Burma" by C.M. Enriquez, reprinted from Asia Magazine, October, 1930, Vol. 30, No. 10, pp. 722–725, 733. , is about the ruby mines of Burma and the Burma Ruby Mines Company. Palagems.com
  • This British Raj List thread led to a British Raj list post with a transcription of a newspaper report about the Lillywhite family, poisoned by arsenic by the family cook in Mandalay, c 1899, resulting in three deaths. The Times of Burma is mentioned as a research resource.
  • This India List post is about the book The Autobiography of a Wanderer In England and Burma: Memoirs of a Former Mayor of Rangoon by Charles Haswell Campagnac, published 2011, with more details here. The author was a lawyer born 1886 in India, with a French Huguenot ancestor. Covers the period to World War 2, including the bombing by the Japanese and subsequent flight to India.
  • Burmese Prince Moung Lat was a British state prisoner in India for 54 years during which time he married the daughter of an Australian widow. Tehelka.com
  • Family budgets in 1920s India by John O’Brien 27 February 2012 British Library Blog: Untold Lives: Sharing stories from the past. Includes a mention of Rangoon.
  • Joseph Robert Milner describes his time in Burma performing primarily clerical duties for the Army from December 1945 to 1947 from page 17 of this document. He was posted by the British Army to a Unit in Rangoon known as AdvancereforsecSEAC ,or Advanced Reinforcement Section, South East Asia Command ronbaileyscarvings.com
  • "Browsing Through a Treasure House: The Literature of the Burma Campaign" by Gordon Graham. Part of WW2. From the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 2011 pdf, html version Abstract

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