Rangoon as a foreign city on burmese soil 1852-1942

Abstract

“Rangoon was a foreign city erected on Burmese soil”. This is how Burmese historian Michael Charney describes Rangoon during the colonial period in his book ‘A History of Modern Burma’. This paper was written to explore how and why Rangoon grew so rapidly in the colonial period of 1852 to 1942 into a prosperous modern, cosmopolitan city as part of British India and what problems that caused. The population grew massively during the time largely due to immigration. The immigration was mainly from India and China but also from elsewhere in Asia and the West, mainly from Britain. Large scale immigration was required as the port city grew quickly due to the large volume of exports, chiefly rice, teak and oil which required the city to be connected to the hinterland. The immigrants did both skilled and unskilled labor. Indians were favored by the British administration as they could communicate with each other, had a higher level of education than the Burmese at the time and were able to do jobs the locals could not. Rangoon became, in simple terms, an extension of British India. This was not the first time that Burma or even Rangoon had hosted immigrants, however during this period the Burmese quickly became the minority in the biggest city in their country. This was an unusual situation that caused a number of problems, including but not limited to racial tension and international crime which required a larger police force made up primarily of Indians and British. Rangoon in this period became a foreign city not just in terms of its population of immigrants but also because of its buildings and the new society that was created. The city once a small pilgrimage town famous for the Shwe Dagon pagoda became much larger and full of churches, mosques and Hindu temples and huge buildings associated with commerce. When the new immigrant population relaxed after work they indulged in forms of entertainment such as drinking alcohol or watching horse racing that were either against Buddhist Burmese culture or simply new and alien ideas.