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Copyright © 2005. All rights |
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Yangon History Rangoon History
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Rangoon history, Yangon
history, Myanmar history, Burma history
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- Rangoon Yangon
some history.
- Yangon City was
in fact an appendage of the
Shwedagon Pagoda,
and it continued to
preserve this character with
varying fortunes till the growth across the
water of Syriam, thronged with the ships of
European adventurers, brought it political
importance. The final phase in the struggle of
the
Burmese and the Mon or Talaing races was now
approaching. At last in A.D. 1763. Alompra,
having
annihilated
Pegu - Bago, signalized his
conquest by raising the Shwedagon Pagoda to a height
greater than that of the rival Mon fane at Pegu
or Bago,
and bestowed upon the city at its foot the
name of Yan-koon, the City of Victory.
Yangon
was made the seat of a viceroy and considerable
traffic passed through its gates ; yet it had
not really made any beginning towards greatness.
The accounts of travelers at this period vary
concerning it. Some, like Colonel Symes, the
British Ambassador who visited Burma a hundred
and twenty-five years ago, give it a character
of importance ;
others, like the officers who
accompanied the
British colonial army to Burma in 1825,
find little to say in its favour. In Symes' day
Yangon lay upon the river shore and was a mile long
and a third of a mile wide.
The inner citadel of
Rangoon Yangon
was surrounded by an indifferent stockade, the
streets were well paved, but inferior to those
of Pegu or Bago. All the officers of Government, the
most opulent merchants, and persons of
consideration lived within the stockade. Yangon had three wharves, and
close to one of these there were " two
commodious wooden houses, used by the merchants
as an exchange, where they usually meet in the
cool of the morning and evening to converse and
transact business."
" We had been so
accustomed," wrote Major Snodgrass some thirty
years later, " to hear Yangon -
Rangoon
Myanmar spoken of as a place of great trade and
commercial
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importance,
that we could not fail to feel
disappointed at its mean and
poor appearance. We had talked
of its Yangon Custom House, its
Yangon dockyards, and Yangon
harbor, until our imaginations
led us to anticipate, if not
splendor, at least some visible
sign of a flourishing commercial
city ; but however humble our
expectaÂtions might have been,
they must still have fallen
short of the miserable and
desolate picture which Yangon
presented when first occupied by
the British troops. |
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Yangon - Ragoon British Colonial Navy at
the River |
Yangon City , if a vast
assembly of wooden huts may be
dignified with that name, is
surrounded by a wooden stockade, from
sixteen to eighteen feet in height,
which effectually shuts out all view of
the fine river which runs past it and
and gives it a confined and insalubrious
appearance.
There are a few brick
houses, chiefly belonging to
Europeans, within
the stockade, upon
which a heavy tax is levied ; and they are only
permitted to be built by special authority from
the Government, which is but seldom granted.
- Canoes and sampans were the only
craft found in this great commercial mart of
India beyond the Ganges."
Thus the indignant
soldier. Greatness had evidently not yet come to
Rangoon - Yangon. From contemporary accounts of
the town some eighty years ago the following
particulars are taken.
The Yangon or
Rangoon stockade covered
an area of seventy-five acres, and lay roughly
between the
Sule Pagoda and the Strand on one
side, and 'Mogul Street and Ezekiel Street on
the other. The Yangon Custom House lay on the river's
edge outside the stockade. Within, there were
two principal thoroughfares, one named the Kaladan,
along which Armenians, Moguls, Parsis,
Hindus, Jews, a few Chinese, and other
foreigners lived ;the main street of Yangon
city, running east and west, past the " palace "
of the viceroy.
Yangon - Rangoon British
Colonial Army
Yangon or Rangoon
Shwedagon pagoda hill
during British colonial
times
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Yangon - Ragoon British Colonial Navy at
the Yangon River
The European
community of Yangon or Rangoon consisted of ten persons, two
of whom, Messrs. Crisp & Trill, had
their place of business near where
Balthazar's Buildings now stand, upon
some of the most valuable land in
Rangoon -
Yangon. Where 36th and Merchant Streets
of Yangon now meet, stood the British
Residency, once occupied by Colonel
Burney.
Outside the
Rangoon Yangon stockade stood the house of Manook Sarkies, an
Armenian resident ; and in its neighborhood,
opposite the present site of the Irrawaddy
Flotilla Company's office, was the
yard in which he built a three hundred
ton chip. The Yangon stockade
was surrounded by a ditch, and a tidal stream
ran up Latter Street. Shafraz Road remained till
much later a canal. Buffaloes wallowed in the
marshes beyond Ezekiel Street ; gardens spread
east of the
Sule Pagoda ; Puzun-Daung was a
small village of boatmen ; and jack and
pineapple orchards like those of Kemendine
spread where now the jail, the lunatic asylum
of Yangon or Rangoon ,
and St. John's College discharge their several
functions. On worship days the
Viceroy usually went to the
pagoda, leaving
the stockade to be ruled by his
lieutenant. |
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Yangon - Rangoon British Colonial Army
Attack at the River
Yangon - Rangoon British Colonial Army
storming the Kemendine Stockade |
All fires had to be
put out while he was absent, and failure
to comply with this regulation brought upon the
offenders the paquets or executioners,
an outlawed tribe of police, who had a
circle
tattooed on each cheek and were known as "
Spotted Faces."
These people
walked the streets
of Yangon or Rangoon with hens' feathers in their ears, which
they thrust into the ashes, " and if a
feather was curled up by the heat, it
meant blackmail upon the spot." Any
effort to resist such exactions only led to worse ones at
the hands of the town ': Each officer of note
kept stocks in his yard, into which people were
incontinently thrust on the most frivolous
grounds.
The Rev. C. Bennet, to whose notes
I am indebted, paints a quaint picture of stern
parents and surly husbands suddenly put into the
stocks at the private instigation of their
frivolous wives and unofficial children.
- In 1841 the stockade of
Yangon
was removed a mile or more inland from the
Irrawaddy river.
Eleven years later it was carried at the
point of the bayonet by the British troops.
Traces of its earthÂworks may still be seen
crossing the Prome – Pyi road, where the
Rangoon
- Yangon golfer pursues his dusty vocation.
Rangoon
or Yangon
Myanmar
was now incorporated in the
British Empire and
definitely launched upon that career of
prosperity which, in
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half a century, has
lifted
Yangon to a city of a quarter of a
million people and the position of third
seaport in the Indian Empire. Life moves in its
streets and waterways ; prosperity,
unbroken yet by any adverse fortune,
smiles upon it ; high hopes are
entertained by all its citizens of a
near future of still greater and almost
boundless fortune ; hopes that are being
steadily realized. Every time that one
who knows it returns to it, after a
lapse of even a year or two, he is
struck with Yangon growth in the
interval, with its new buildings, its
new streets, its new institutions and
its new pride.
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Yet
Yangon or
Rangoon new buildings at
least should teach it humility. For a wave of
terrible architecture has for sonic years been
passing over the devoted Yangon city, and cathedrals,
town halls, and Yangon public offices have been growing
up which are a torment to the eye. Happily it is
not all new. It is served by an immemorial river
upon whose bosom a great life pulses ; it is
dominated by an edifice whose stateliness and
beauty are unsurpassed in Burma, one might
almost say in the world ; and in its streets
fifty races gather to give it picturesque ness.
Unlike most Eastern cities, Yangon is devoid of
mystery. Rangoon's streets lie open to the eye,
its life moves much upon the surface.
Superficial visitors are apt to pass Yangon by
as of little interest. Yet there is much in
Yangon that will "
repay investigation." |
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Yagon - Rangoon Burma Natives 17
th Century |
Rangoon's - Yangon
most cosmopolitan thoroughfare is Mogul Street,
which begins with the funnel of an ocean
steamer, rises to the white minarets of a mosque, and ends under the wooden eaves
of a Native Christian chapel. A Chettis' hall,
with wooden columns of a design that was
probably invented in Southern India twenty
centuries ago, faces the white temple of Islam,
and the voice of the green-turbaned muezzin as
he calls the Faithful to prayer, is overborne by
the clatter and chink of money and the brawling
of that loud Chetti.
The main oriental
bazaar in Yangon or Rangoon is the
Bogyoke Market,
named after the father of
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi.Over the way, in an
adjoining Yangon street, the Hindu clangs his bell and
blows his conch before the altars of Shiv, in
defiance of his Muslim neighbor.
His Muslim
neighbor retorts by sacrificing the sacred cow
and spilling her blood before the very eyes of
those who worship her as a god. Gentle amenities
of this kind, fomented by turbulent Afghans with
blue turban and
by Hindu millionaires, whose care it is to
establish an alibi by retreating at the crisis
to a safe distance of fifteen hundred miles, arc
apt occasionally to end in conflicts of a
serious character. In 1893 they ended in a
Yangon riot
which was only quelled after thirty persons had
been shot down, some two hundred, mostly mounted
policemen, had been wounded, and a regiment of
English soldiers had been summoned to over-awe
the populace. Often, as I drive down this
crowded Yangon thoroughÂfare, past the archways
of the mosque, I am reminded of the appearance
it presented on that occasion when its steps
were slippery with the blood of mullahs and
muezzins and |
Yangon - Rangoon Harbor 18th
Century Myanmar - Burma |
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chulias pouring out of ragged
wounds made by the sniders of the military
police. I am reminded of the
latent forces of an ancient hate under the new
cosmopolitan unity of Rangoon or Yangon
Myanmar.
Some quarters of
Yangon are a little bit of India. Parallel
to it, on the left as one faces the town, are
Latter Street and Tsikai Moung Khine Street,
with their tributaries, in which the Chinese
community musters in force. It is a Yangon
or Rangoon community of exclusive people, with
an atmosphere and an architecture of its own ; a
Yangon community of rich merchants with broad
views and the feelings and manners of gentlemen.
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Yangon - Rangoon Burmese Lady 18
Century
Yangon - Rangoon Burmese Lady
with Umbrella 18 Century |
During British
colonial times, the Scots, who stood
at the top of the Yangon or Rangoon commercial ladder, readily
admit that they would rather do business with
the Chinaman than with any other Oriental in
Rangoon or Yangon
Myanmar. And this is as true of the
Yangon carpenter
who makes goods of mediaeval solidity as it is
of the leading Chinamen whose houses tower above
the wide thoroughfares, an ornament to the city.
Several here, as in the Straits Settlements and
wherever the British flag is flown, have
attained to fortune and honor.
Yet the Chinese
of Yangon
Myanmar is not quite an angel in disguise ;
he is a man of many secret vices and one or two
pronounced weaknesses. His leading Yangon clubs,
modeled ostensibly on the lines of British
institutions, cover a good deal of hard gambling
; his secret societies are credited by rumor
with some of the attributes of the Camorra ; and
most of his gains are made from liquor and
opium, for which he takes out a license from the
State. More and more local people are retreating
into the suburbs. With his philosophic habits,
his indolent ways, his love of good things, and
his spiritual yearnings, he is no rival to the
thrifty Surati, the aboriginal Coringhi, and the
strenuous Chinaman. To see him thoroughly at
home one must now go as far as Kemendine.
There,
under the shade of the great trees, the sculptor
of alabaster Buddha plies his chisel, the
Yangon City umbrella-maker displays the delicate feeling of
the race for beautiful things in the manufacture
of yellow and green transparencies of perfect
design, the weaver weaves tape for binding
palm-leaf manuscripts into texts from the sacred
books, the lacquer artist paints and gilds his
cabinets for the monastery libraries. There in
short one who would see the Burman or Myanmar's at work in
his own way, and upon objects meant for Burmese
or Myanmar use, must go. There are silver-workers and woodcarvers in Yangon's Godwin Road and other
thoroughfares of the city, but they cater
almost solely for European tastes.
In the Surati Bazaar
-today its Bogyoke Market- there is the most " Oriental " part of Rangoon
- Yangon
Myanmar.
In its half-lit passages, its avenues bordered
by stalls, in which the mixed populace of traders transact
their business, there is somewhat that recalls the
flavor of Smyrna
and Istanbul ; but it is a little flavor only, a
thing in its beginnings.
Here and there a
silk stall is kept by a daughter of the soil, but
the majority of those who wait for the custom of
the visitor are underbred Suratis with the
manner less manners that come to Orientals under
British rule. The Yangon bazaar is owned by a company
of Suratis whose enterprise forestalled that of
the City Fathers.
The shares of the Surati
Bazaar Company were unpurchasable, and their
dividends reach fabulous dimensions.
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It is upon the south
of Rangoon or Yangon or Yangon
Myanmar that the energy of the Municipality
has long been concentrated. Enormous areas of
land which were little better than buffalo pools
half a century ago, and portions of which
survived in that capacity to within a year or
two ago, have been reclaimed at great expense,
to provide for the growth of the city. A resolute belief in
its future is one of the best characteristics of
Rangoon, and its confidence is likely to be
justified. New blocks are being occupied, new
streets arc being made, new centers of life are being opened out—parks and
gardens and offices—at this southern end of
Rangoon, between the Puzun-Daung and the Hlaing.
There is a fascination in the evident
process of growth. Every year there is
somewhat added, and in ten years there
is an absolute transformation. Every time that I come back to
Rangoon or Yangon I walk out to look at the new town, the
new houses, the newly metalled roads, running
between the wide unoccupied spaces of newly reclaimed
land. Thinking of Yangon - Rangoon I feel that
the interest of it lies much more in the future
than in the present or the past. If it were not
already very proud of its achievements it might
adopt as its civic motto the phrase that Cicero
applied to youth -" Non res sed sees est."
It has no golden Myanmar to speak of ; no buried past.
Here is no " rose-red city, half as old as time
" ; but it is full of life and color, a
kaleidoscope of races, with a growing character
of its own and the joyous atmosphere of youth.
At
the center east at
Yangon City is the
royal lake,
and beautiful parks. There is no
city in the East with a finer playground, and in
time, when the Victoria lakes which provide
Yangon - Rangoon
Myanmar with its drinking-water are added to the
total of finished
beauty, they will become
famous.
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half a century, has
lifted
Yangon to a city of a quarter of a
million people and the position of third
seaport in the Indian Empire. Life moves in its
streets and waterways ; prosperity,
unbroken yet by any adverse fortune,
smiles upon it ; high hopes are
entertained by all its citizens of a
near future of still greater and almost
boundless fortune ; hopes that are being
steadily realized. Every time that one
who knows it returns to it, after a
lapse of even a year or two, he is
struck with Yangon growth in the
interval, with its new buildings, its
new streets, its new institutions and
its new pride.
|
Yet
Yangon or
Rangoon new buildings at
least should teach it humility. For a wave of
terrible architecture has for sonic years been
passing over the devoted Yangon city, and cathedrals,
town halls, and Yangon public offices have been growing
up which are a torment to the eye. Happily it is
not all new. It is served by an immemorial river
upon whose bosom a great life pulses ; it is
dominated by an edifice whose stateliness and
beauty are unsurpassed in Burma, one might
almost say in the world ; and in its streets
fifty races gather to give it picturesque ness.
Unlike most Eastern cities, Yangon is devoid of
mystery. Rangoon's streets lie open to the eye,
its life moves much upon the surface.
Superficial visitors are apt to pass Yangon by
as of little interest. Yet there is much in
Yangon that will "
repay investigation." |
|
Yagon - Rangoon Burma Natives 17
th Century |
Rangoon's - Yangon
most cosmopolitan thoroughfare is Mogul Street,
which begins with the funnel of an ocean
steamer, rises to the white minarets of a mosque, and ends under the wooden eaves
of a Native Christian chapel. A Chettis' hall,
with wooden columns of a design that was
probably invented in Southern India twenty
centuries ago, faces the white temple of Islam,
and the voice of the green-turbaned muezzin as
he calls the Faithful to prayer, is overborne by
the clatter and chink of money and the brawling
of that loud Chetti.
The main oriental
bazaar in Yangon or Rangoon is the
Bogyoke Market,
named after the father of
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi.Over the way, in an
adjoining Yangon street, the Hindu clangs his bell and
blows his conch before the altars of Shiv, in
defiance of his Muslim neighbor.
His Muslim
neighbor retorts by sacrificing the sacred cow
and spilling her blood before the very eyes of
those who worship her as a god. Gentle amenities
of this kind, fomented by turbulent Afghans with
blue turban and
by Hindu millionaires, whose care it is to
establish an alibi by retreating at the crisis
to a safe distance of fifteen hundred miles, arc
apt occasionally to end in conflicts of a
serious character. In 1893 they ended in a
Yangon riot
which was only quelled after thirty persons had
been shot down, some two hundred, mostly mounted
policemen, had been wounded, and a regiment of
English soldiers had been summoned to over-awe
the populace. Often, as I drive down this
crowded Yangon thoroughÂfare, past the archways
of the mosque, I am reminded of the appearance
it presented on that occasion when its steps
were slippery with the blood of mullahs and
muezzins and |
Yangon - Rangoon Harbor 18th
Century Myanmar - Burma |
|
chulias pouring out of ragged
wounds made by the sniders of the military
police. I am reminded of the
latent forces of an ancient hate under the new
cosmopolitan unity of Rangoon or Yangon
Myanmar.
Some quarters of
Yangon are a little bit of India. Parallel
to it, on the left as one faces the town, are
Latter Street and Tsikai Moung Khine Street,
with their tributaries, in which the Chinese
community musters in force. It is a Yangon
or Rangoon community of exclusive people, with
an atmosphere and an architecture of its own ; a
Yangon community of rich merchants with broad
views and the feelings and manners of gentlemen.
|
|
|
Yangon - Rangoon Burmese Lady 18
Century
Yangon - Rangoon Burmese Lady
with Umbrella 18 Century |
During British
colonial times, the Scots, who stood
at the top of the Yangon or Rangoon commercial ladder, readily
admit that they would rather do business with
the Chinaman than with any other Oriental in
Rangoon or Yangon
Myanmar. And this is as true of the
Yangon carpenter
who makes goods of mediaeval solidity as it is
of the leading Chinamen whose houses tower above
the wide thoroughfares, an ornament to the city.
Several here, as in the Straits Settlements and
wherever the British flag is flown, have
attained to fortune and honor.
Yet the Chinese
of Yangon
Myanmar is not quite an angel in disguise ;
he is a man of many secret vices and one or two
pronounced weaknesses. His leading Yangon clubs,
modeled ostensibly on the lines of British
institutions, cover a good deal of hard gambling
; his secret societies are credited by rumor
with some of the attributes of the Camorra ; and
most of his gains are made from liquor and
opium, for which he takes out a license from the
State. More and more local people are retreating
into the suburbs. With his philosophic habits,
his indolent ways, his love of good things, and
his spiritual yearnings, he is no rival to the
thrifty Surati, the aboriginal Coringhi, and the
strenuous Chinaman. To see him thoroughly at
home one must now go as far as Kemendine.
There,
under the shade of the great trees, the sculptor
of alabaster Buddha plies his chisel, the
Yangon City umbrella-maker displays the delicate feeling of
the race for beautiful things in the manufacture
of yellow and green transparencies of perfect
design, the weaver weaves tape for binding
palm-leaf manuscripts into texts from the sacred
books, the lacquer artist paints and gilds his
cabinets for the monastery libraries. There in
short one who would see the Burman or Myanmar's at work in
his own way, and upon objects meant for Burmese
or Myanmar use, must go. There are silver-workers and woodcarvers in Yangon's Godwin Road and other
thoroughfares of the city, but they cater
almost solely for European tastes.
In the Surati Bazaar
-today its Bogyoke Market- there is the most " Oriental " part of Rangoon
- Yangon
Myanmar.
In its half-lit passages, its avenues bordered
by stalls, in which the mixed populace of traders transact
their business, there is somewhat that recalls the
flavor of Smyrna
and Istanbul ; but it is a little flavor only, a
thing in its beginnings.
Here and there a
silk stall is kept by a daughter of the soil, but
the majority of those who wait for the custom of
the visitor are underbred Suratis with the
manner less manners that come to Orientals under
British rule. The Yangon bazaar is owned by a company
of Suratis whose enterprise forestalled that of
the City Fathers.
The shares of the Surati
Bazaar Company were unpurchasable, and their
dividends reach fabulous dimensions.
|
|
It is upon the south
of Rangoon or Yangon or Yangon
Myanmar that the energy of the Municipality
has long been concentrated. Enormous areas of
land which were little better than buffalo pools
half a century ago, and portions of which
survived in that capacity to within a year or
two ago, have been reclaimed at great expense,
to provide for the growth of the city. A resolute belief in
its future is one of the best characteristics of
Rangoon, and its confidence is likely to be
justified. New blocks are being occupied, new
streets arc being made, new centers of life are being opened out—parks and
gardens and offices—at this southern end of
Rangoon, between the Puzun-Daung and the Hlaing.
There is a fascination in the evident
process of growth. Every year there is
somewhat added, and in ten years there
is an absolute transformation. Every time that I come back to
Rangoon or Yangon I walk out to look at the new town, the
new houses, the newly metalled roads, running
between the wide unoccupied spaces of newly reclaimed
land. Thinking of Yangon - Rangoon I feel that
the interest of it lies much more in the future
than in the present or the past. If it were not
already very proud of its achievements it might
adopt as its civic motto the phrase that Cicero
applied to youth -" Non res sed sees est."
It has no golden Myanmar to speak of ; no buried past.
Here is no " rose-red city, half as old as time
" ; but it is full of life and color, a
kaleidoscope of races, with a growing character
of its own and the joyous atmosphere of youth.
At
the center east at
Yangon City is the
royal lake,
and beautiful parks. There is no
city in the East with a finer playground, and in
time, when the Victoria lakes which provide
Yangon - Rangoon
Myanmar with its drinking-water are added to the
total of finished
beauty, they will become
famous.
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|
Some of the turf is
as fine already as the turf of an
English park. Amongst the trees are many
of the sumptuous kind, which break into
one dazzling mass of bloom, such as the
pagoda- tree, the padouk, the pinma, and the
laburnum acacia. These trees are already a
feature of Yangon - Rangoon
Myanmar, but their wealth is too
widely scattered to make its full impression.
The trees
adorn the long
avenues of Yangon or Rangoon, several miles of each species—the
labor of a single generation—they would make
Yangon - Rangoon
Myanmar in the spring-time a spectacle of the
most striking beauty. The roads of the
Municipality run into a hundred and twenty
miles: I sometimes picture a hundred and twenty
miles of trees in the most dazzling, riotous,
bloom, each marshaled under its own kind. |
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