“The pacification of the country has been a prolonged work of much difficulty. Dacoity on the largest scale has been rampant; and military operations have been necessary in almost every part of the country in order to suppress it. To the end of the year 1886 about 180 encounters had taken place with these lawless bands. They seldom offered serious resistance, except when fighting in bush or jungle. The loss they caused to the British troops between November 17th, 1885, and October 31st, 1886, amounted to 11 officers and 80 men, killed or died from wounds. But greater difficulties than the armed opposition were found in the dense jungle, the want of roads, and the unfavourable, in some cases deadly, climate. The result of these difficulties during the period above mentioned was a total loss of 3,053 officers and men, who died from disease or had to be invalided. The average number of troops employed in Upper Burma during 1886 has been 14,000, but at the end of 1886 the number in the country was 25,000.”
So deep-rooted is the habit of dacoity in Burma that it easily breaks out afresh whenever disorder spreads, or whenever any daring fellow thinks fit to try his luck as a boh or leader. The people are easily deluded with his boast and swagger; and having implicit faith in the special tattooing and charms which are warranted to render them bullet and sword proof, they readily follow his standard. Hundreds of bohs have had their day during the last five years, and pursued a successful course of robbery, murder and rebellion for months together, eluding the police and the military. But owing to the tenacity of purpose, and the inexhaustible resources of the British Government, they have to succumb in the end. Many have been killed or taken prisoners in engagements fought; others treacherously murdered by their own followers, to get the reward set on the head of the notorious outlaw; others, after months of a hunted life in the jungles, have come in and surrendered. There has been always ample opportunity given by the British for those who wished to abandon that bad way of life to do so, and more than once a free pardon has been offered to all those who might give themselves up, provided that they had not been guilty of murder. Many, from time to time, have availed themselves of that arrangement.
DACOITS IN PRISON, WITH INDIAN SEPOY GUARD.
Several princes—in Burma princes are fairly plentiful, notwithstanding that so many were massacred by order of King Theebaw—have tried their hands at it, with vague ideas of getting the mastery of the country in due time. One, known by the title of the Sekkya Prince, established himself in the hill country about Kyaukse, only thirty miles from Mandalay, and as late as 1889 gave an immense amount of trouble, setting the military police at defiance for months, and committing many murders and depredations. He had an armed following of several hundreds, and several fights took place between them and the police. Though the dacoits were each time defeated and scattered, the ground was so difficult for pursuit, that they could never catch the leader. At length he was taken in the Shan States, brought to Kyaukse, tried, convicted and hanged. This is a specimen of the kind of guerilla warfare going on in every district all over the country at that time.
Another matter, which still further complicated the situation and gave strength to the forces of disorder, was the sanction which dacoity had received through the corruption of those high in office in the Burman Government before we took it over. A British civil officer of high rank, the commissioner of a division, writes as follows, as late as the middle of 1889, more than three years after the annexation:—
“The task of reducing my own division to order I find a gigantic one. The Burman nature is simply saturated with lawlessness, and it takes the form of dacoity. Since King Mindohn’s death [i.e., from the accession of King Theebaw in 1878] it is a fact that most of the official classes in Upper Burma made large incomes by dacoity. Men high in office in Mandalay actually kept dacoit bohs, and shared with them loot, or the subsidies which were paid by the villagers for protection from other dacoits. The dacoit bohs were actually the governors, and paid some of the mingyees [ministers of state] in Mandalay regular sums, on condition of being let alone! Each boh had a large immediate gang or body of men around him, and a militia at any time available from the villages. We have had to break up this system of boh government all over Upper Burma, a system which had been running for the last ten years. The villagers themselves have become so accustomed to the government by dacoit chiefs, that they are actually afraid and even unwilling to help in getting rid of them. It will be admitted that difficulties like these are enormous; sometimes they seem to be insuperable, and one is often inclined to despair. We have not only to deal with the thousands of lawless ones who think we are encroaching upon their rights, but we have to try and educate the people to believe that these dacoits are not their rulers, and are not to be so. The villagers do not yet realise this, and it is this process of education, slow and painful, that impedes us so terribly in the work of subjugation and pacification. But the progress made has been very great.”
The following is given as a specimen of the encounters which for the first two or three years were of constant occurrence. This affair was perhaps exceptional in the amount of resistance offered, but in other respects quite usual and ordinary. It is quoted from a newspaper dated May 1888:—