PREFACE
Upper Burma was invaded and annexed in the year 1885. The work hardly occupied a month. In the following year the subjugation of the people by the destruction of all formidable armed resistance was effected; lastly, the pacification of the country, including the establishment of an orderly government with peace and security, occupied four years.
As head of the civil administration, I was mainly concerned with this last phase.
It would be a difficult task to give a continuous history of the military operations by which the country was subjugated. The resistance opposed to our troops was desultory, spasmodic, and without definite plan or purpose. The measures taken to overcome it necessarily were affected by these characteristics, although they were framed on definite principles. A history of them would resolve itself into a number of more or less unconnected narratives.
A similar difficulty, but less in degree, meets the attempt to record the measures which I have included in the term "pacification." Certain definite objects were always before us. The policy to be followed for their attainment was fixed, and the measures and instruments by which it was to be carried out were selected and prepared. But I have found it best not to attempt to follow any order, either chronological or other, in writing this narrative.
My purpose in writing has been to give an intelligible narrative of the work done in Burma in the years following the annexation. It was certainly arduous work done under great difficulties of all kinds, and, from the nature of the case, with less chance of recognition or distinction than of disease or death. The work was, I believe, well done, and has proved itself to be good.
My narrative may not attract many who have no connection with Burma. But for those who served in Burma during the period covered by it, whether soldiers or civilians, it may have an interest, and especially for those still in the Burma Commission and their successors.
I hope that Field-Marshal Sir George White, V.C., to whom, and to all the officers and men of the Burma Field Force, I owe so much, may find my pages not without interest.