Diplomacy and Reform under King Mindon, 1853-78
Like his contemporary, the reformist King Mongkut of Siam (1851-68), King Mindon had spent most of his adult life in a Buddhist monastery before ascending the throne. He was a scholar and a peaceful man, perhaps the only Konbaung ruler to practice the Buddhist principle of ahimsa (non-harm), preferring to refrain from violence rather than repenting of it. This was revealed from the very beginning in his refusal to order a blood purge of Pagan Min's former supporters. His reign of a quarter of a century was characterized by a conciliatory attitude toward the British, a desire to extend diplomatic contacts to other Western countries, a program of modest reform, and an active promotion of the Buddhist religion.
Like other newly installed kings, he moved his capital, this time from Amarapura to a location a few miles away at the foot of Mandalay Hill At Mandalay, the "Cluster of Gems," an old prophecy held that 24 centuries after the Buddha, a center of Buddhist learning would arise and flourish. The king built a palace of teak enclosed by square walls two kilometers long on each side, and by 1861 the entire project was completed.
King Mindon's moderate rule was a welcome respite for Burmese and British alike after the vagaries of Tharrawaddy and Pagan Min. In dealing with the British, however, Mindon faced problems not known to his predecessors. Because of the annexation of Lower Burma, his kingdom was cut off from the sea, making economic and diplomatic relations with countries other than Britain extremely difficult. A mission sent in 1854 to Calcutta to raise again the question of the reversion of Lower Burma received Dalhousie's brusque reply that "as long as the sun shines, Pegu [Lower Burma] shall remain British." Commercial interests, now based in Rangoon, pressed more rigorously for the opening of the kingdom to increased trade, exploitatim of its natural resources, and development of a river and land route to the supposed riches of southwest China markets. These, and the perceived threat of a growing French presence in Indochina confirmed the British in their treatment of the kingdom as a denizen of that ambiguous region between independent status such as Siam enjoyed, with its own embassy in London, and the vassalage pure and simple of the Indian princely state.
Mindon felt that the future of his kingdom depended upon the modernization of its institutions and with the support of his most influential minister, the Kinwun Mingyi, initiated a reform program aimed at strengthening the position of the central government. One of his most ambitious measures was the establishment of fixed salaries rather than appanages for royal officials instead of being supported by their districts they would receive remuneration from the central government. Regional governors were appointed to supervise the district governors, and the powers of the district chiefs and village headmen were curbed by giving their judicial responsibilities to provincial judges. Mindon established the thathameda, a tax on households with variable assessments to take into account years of bad harvest, fires, or natural catastrophes, in order to raise revenue for the reforms. Its success was impaired, however, by the opposition of the district chief and village headman "gentry" class and the determination of officials to continue being supported by their jurisdictions.
Mindon authorized a system of coinage to replace barter and payment in kind; a royal mint was established, and weights and measures were standardized. The overall economic policy that he envisioned could be described as a kind of state capitalism: royal monopolies, on all eprtable commodities would be maintained, and international trade would be controlled by the government. The profits from exports would be used to support the government, and historian Maung Htin Aung suggests that the king hoped that these would be sufficient in the future to relieve the people of all direct taxation. A "controlled" economy of this sort was dearly at variance with the ideas of British merchants in Rangoon; they were further rankled by his policy of buying goods directly and more cheaply at Calcutta rather than through them. Mindon set up a ministry of industry, headed by one of his sons, the Mekkara Prince. A number of textile mills, rice and wheat mills, sugar refineries, and factories, producing small industrial goods such as glassware and pottery, were built. To improve transportation he purchased river steamers. A telegraph system was strung, lnking Upper Burma to the outside world through the British system in Lowe Burma Telegraphers were trained, and a Morse code was devised for the Burmese language.
The king did not see modernization as inconsistent with a basic commitment to the Buddhist religion; its integrity seemed threatened by the spread of missionary activity in Lower Burma and the refusal of the British authorities there to grant patronage to the sangha. Mindon held annual examinations on the Pali scriptures, built a number of pagodas and moamteries in his new city, and supported both the orthodox Thudhamma sect and a group of reformist monks headed by the Shwegyin Sayadaw. He donated a hti, or jewel-encrusted golden umbrella, to be placed on top of the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon but to his disappointment was prohibited by the British from coming down to dedicate it. Contacts that had been disrupted by years of war were reestablished with the sangha of Siam. His greatest enterprise, however, was the convening of the Fifth Buddhist Council at Mandalay between 1871 and 1874 to produce an authoritative text of the Pali Tripitaka, or scripture. The entire Tripitaka was carved on 729 stone tablets and displayed in the Kuthodaw Pagoda, east of Mandalay Hill. The council marked the zenith of his prestige as a Buddhist monarch, as the fourth council had been held more than 1800 years earlier in Ceylon.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
