Colonel Burney, who was Resident at the court of Ava in 1830, published a large number of valuable contributions to the history, geography, and resources of Upper Burma, and accurate itineraries of the Theinnee and Bhamô routes to China. Our experience demonstrated the accuracy of the latter as far as Momien, and it may be inferred that the remainder will be found equally exact. Pemberton[2] seems to have been the first to fully realise that—to use his own words—“the province of Yunnan, to which the north-eastern borders of our Indian empire have now so closely approximated, has become from this circumstance and our existing amicable relations with the court of Ava an object of peculiar interest to us.” In the same year Captain Hannay accompanied a Burmese mission to Mogoung, and for the first time Bhamô was accurately described by an eye-witness, and much valuable information gained respecting the trade then carried on between Ava and China. His description of the importance of the town, however, differed widely from that of Drs. Griffiths and Bayfield, who visited it two years later.[3]
Hannay gives the reported number of houses as one thousand five hundred, while the latter travellers estimated town and suburbs as containing five hundred and ninety-eight houses, “neither good nor large,” which latter description is more in keeping with the present condition of the town.
In 1848 Baron Otto des Granges published a short survey of the countries between Bengal and China, showing the great commercial and political importance of Bhamô, and the practicability of a direct trade overland between Calcutta and China.
In this paper the far-seeing author advocated the equipment of a small expedition to ascertain the mercantile relations of the country about Bhamô, to examine the mineral wealth of Yunnan, and to enter into negotiations with the Chinese merchants.
In 1862 the government of India, in the prospect of a treaty being negotiated with the king of Burma, directed their Chief Commissioner, Sir A. Phayre, to include in it, if possible, the reopening of the caravan route from Western China by the town of Bhamô, and the concession of facilities to British merchants to reside at that place, or to travel to Yunnan, and for Chinese from Yunnan to have free access to British territory, including Assam. The first of these objects was to be effected by obtaining the king’s sanction to a joint Burmese and British mission to China. A treaty was concluded whereby the British and Burmese governments were declared friends, and trade in and through Upper Burma was freely thrown open to British enterprise. It was further stipulated that a direct trade with China might be carried on through Upper Burma, subject to a transit duty of one per cent. ad valorem on Chinese exports, and nil on imports. The proposal, however, as to the joint mission was unsuccessful.
In the following year, Dr. Williams, formerly resident at the court of Mandalay, obtained the royal permission to proceed as far as Bhamô, where he arrived in February, after a journey of twenty-two days. His object was to test the practicability of a route through Burma to Western China, and the results of his experience led him to strongly advocate the Bhamô routes as politically, physically, and commercially the most advantageous.
His energetic advocacy led the mercantile community of Rangoon to appreciate the importance of their own position, commanding, as it does, the most ancient highway to Western China. His claim, however, to have been the first to suggest this trade route must yield to that of Otto des Granges; and the assertion that he was the first Englishman who visited Bhamô could only have been made in ignorance or forgetfulness of the labours of Hannay, Bayfield, and Griffiths.
When the commercial acuteness of the merchants was thus directed to the possibilities of the overland trade, it might seem at first sight that the stream could be tapped at Mandalay without following it up to the borders of Yunnan.
But our growing intercourse with the capital of Burma made it known that for twelve years the Burmo-Chinese trade via Bhamô, which in 1855 represented £500,000 per annum, had almost entirely ceased. Whether this were owing to the effects of the Mahommedan rebellion in Yunnan, or, as some alleged, to Burmese policy, was uncertain. It was an additional problem, and the then Chief Commissioner, General Fytche, anxiously pressed upon the government of India the importance of solving it, and under the treaty of 1862 of thoroughly examining the possibility and probable results of reopening the Bhamô trade route.
This enterprise might be deemed one of hereditary interest to the descendant of that enterprising merchant-traveller, Mr. Fitch, who has left an account of his visit to Pegu in 1586. The proposed expedition was sanctioned by the government of India in September 1867, and the consent of the king of Burma having been duly obtained, arrangements were forwarded for the departure of the mission from Mandalay in January 1868. The chief objects of the expedition were, to use the words of General Fytche, “to discover the cause of the cessation of the trade formerly existing by these routes, the exact position held by the Kakhyens, Shans, and Panthays, with reference to that traffic, and their disposition, or otherwise, to resuscitate it, also to examine the physical conditions of these routes.”