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Thibaw amd the Fall of the Burmese Kingdom, 1878-86

King Mindon died on 01 October 1878, and the 19-year-old Thibaw, one of his sons, was proclaimed his successor by the Council of Ministers. There were other, more talented princes who could have ascended the throne. The selection of Thibaw, however, was pushed by the ambitious Alenandaw, or Central Palace Queen, who hoped to marry her three daughters to the new king. It was also supported by "progressives" around the Kinwun Mingyi, who desired to establish a constitutional monarchy in which the king would serve as president of the Council of Ministers. This odd coalition believed that the young and pliable Thibaw would be a ready instrument for the achievement of their different aims.

No one had reckoned, however, with Supayalat, the Central Palace Queen's second daughter. She was married to Thibaw as his secondary queen but immediately moved to oust her elder sister as Thibaw's chief queen and even undermined the position of her mother. She grew to have such influence over Thibaw that he refrained from taking the many wives considered the king's prerogative. More significantly in terms of Burma's future, she collected a circle of supporters within the palace, of whom the principal one was a xenophobic government minister, the Taingda I Mingyi, who blocked the reform plans of the progressives. The Taingda Mingyi engineered a massacre of royal princes and princesses, totaling around 40, on January 31, 1879, in order to stem possible revolt. After Mindon's firm and moderate rule, Thibaw's reign was one of dangerous instability. Rumors were rife that one or more of the exiled princes was plotting to overthrow the king. These exiles included the Myingun Prince, one of the instigators of the assassination plot against Mindon, and the Nyaungyan Prince, who had escaped the royal purge in 1879. Terrified of assassination, Thibaw refused to leave the palace, thus cutting himself off from his subjects. Apparently, Supayalat and the Taingda Mingyi were convinced that the British, tied down in South Africa and Afghanistan, were stretched too thin to take effective action.

The directive on the "Shoe Question" made communication with the British Resident very difficult; compromise on this touchy issue was evidently impossible. When the British resident at Kabul in Afghanistan was assassinated in September 1879, the Indian governor general, seeking to avoid a similar incident in Mandalay with all its attendant complications, ordered the residency shut down.

Although the records are tantalizingly ambiguous on the subject, it seems that Thibaw's government was seeking an alliance with France as a counterbalance to the British. A diplomatic mission sent to Europe in May 1883 negotiated a supplement to the 1873 Franco-Burmese commercial treaty, signed in Paris. At that time France was involved in a war with China over Vietnam and was extending its influence into the Laotian states of Vientiane and Luang Prabang. According to historian D.G.E. Hail, the French prime minister, Jules Ferry, admitted to the British ambassador in July 1884 that the Burmese wanted an allance and military assistance. It was rumored that, among other things, the French had agreed to take over management of the royal monopolies, rate the Burmese post and telegraph systems, and open up a land route (some said a railroad) between Upper Burma and Tongking in French-controlled Vietnam.

A strong French presence in Upper Burma was perceived as a strategic threat which the British could not tolerate. Thus, a movement for the annexation of Thibaw's kingdom gained strength. It was supported by commercial interests in Britain who argued that annexation of Upper Burma would open up the supposedly rich markets of southwestern China and by those in Rangoon who were frustrated by the allegedly monopolistic policies of the Burmese government. Moral sanction was provided by British journalists who described in livid detail the further execution of alleged subversives, although it is unlikely that the number of victims approached that of the reigns of earlier kings, particularly Pagan Min.

In mid-1885 Burmese independence was a house of cards on the verge of collapse. The prerequisite puff of air was provided by the Bombay-Burma Trading Corporation (BBTC) case. This firm had a contract with the king to extract teak from forests located just north of the border (this was still a royal monopoly). Following the complaint of Burmese foresters, the Council of Ministers in August 1885 served the corporation with a large fine (over £100,000) for defrauding it in the shipment of logs to Lower Burma. The British government complained that the Council of Ministers could not make an ex parte decision in the matter and requested that it submit the issue to arbitration. This the Council of Ministers refused in October, saying the issue had been settled.

The Indian governor general, Lord Dufferin, sent an ultimatum to the king at the end of the month; it called not only for arbitration of the BBTC case but also for the reinstatement of the British resident at the capital with a large escort of armed men, Burmese cooperation in opening up a China trade route and, in light of the perceived French threat, an agreement that Calcutta would supervise Burma's foreign policy. The Council of Ministers replied with an assertion of its right to an independent foreign policy.

British forces sailed from Thayetmyo farther up the Irrawaddy in a flotilla of steamboats on November 17, 1885. The Third, and final, Anglo-Burmese War had begun. There was fighting at the Minhla fort, but the capital city of Mandalay fell without bloodshed on November 28 when an armistice was arranged. Some of Thibaw's ministers urged him to flee the capital to carry on resistance elsewhere, but he refused. He and Queen Supayalat met the British commander, and the following day they left the palace for a British steamer on the river. Burmese and British accounts alike describe the sorrowful spectacle of the royal couple riding down to the river in a lowly bullock cart, surrounded by British troops, while the populace wept. They were exiled to India, never to see their native country again.

The Indian government considered putting the six-year-old son of the Nyaungyan Prince on the throne and making Upper Burma a protectorate. Growing insurrection and the defiance of the Hluttaw, however, led to the decision in February 1886 to make the country a directly administered province of British India.