About History and Culture, Myanmar

Sometime in the first few centuries before Christ, a people called the Mons wound their way out of central Asia and down to the Thanlwin and Sittoung rivers. They spoke a dialect of the Mon-Khmer family of languages, and they were the first people known to inhabit what is now Myanmar. The Mons called the region the land of gold, practiced Buddhism, and traded with India’s great king Ashoka.

The Mons were not to be the only people in Mynamar for long. A few centuries later, the Pyu people arrived from Tibet, and they were followed by the Bamars who settled along the rich Irrawaddy river, which they controlled from Pagan.

It was the Bamars who established the First Burmese Empire. Under King Anawrata, they conquered the Mon capital of Thaton and took a legendary 30,000 prisoners back to Pagan. The subtle appeal of the Buddhism the Mon practiced became a powerful conduit of their culture (a pattern seen in India as well) and Anawrata himself converted to Buddhism. The Bamars even adopted the Mon language. The Mons were not, apparently, very much appeased by these signs of cultural appreciation, as they later rebelled and killed Anawrata’s son. They were quickly crushed by Kyanzitta, a Bamar general who soon assumed rulership.

Kyanzitta’s rise marked the beginning of Burma’s golden age, when the bounty of rice irrigated by the Irrawady nourished civilization as it never had before. Thousands of temples were built, and the arts flourished. The kingdom’s health didn’t last long, however. Within a century, Kublai Khan appeared on the horizon, at the head of Mongol armies that were in their time the most powerful military forces on earth. The Khan’s demand for tribute was met with defiance by the Burmese King Narathihapate, and the Mongol invasion started to roll in. Ironically, it was not the ferocious Mongols who posed the greatest threat to Narathihapate: he was poisoned by his son, who later lost the kingdom to the Mongols in 1287 at the battle of Vochan.

The Mons and the Bamar withdrew to the South, where they founded the enchanting city of Bago. In the North, descendants of the Tai people, called the Shan, founded a kingdom at Innwa. Soon the Mons and the Shan went to war, at almost exactly the time the Europeans started moving into Asia.

It was Nicoto di Conti, a Venetian, who was the first European to encounter Myanmar. Di Conti visited Bago in 1435 and stayed for four months. In 1498, the Portugeuse Vasco de Gama found a sea route to India, opening wide the path to Asia. Soon the Portugeuse had a colony in India at Goa, which they used as a base for eastern trade. De Gama’s countryman Anthony Correa made the first trade agreement in Myanmar with the viceroy of Martaban in 1519. The viceroy’s king, Tabinshweti, disapproved of the agreement, which was settled without his consent. Tabinshweti attacked Martaban in 1541, and, surprisingly, 700 Portuguese fought on his side. The Loyalist Portuguese retreated to Rahkine, another of the region’s kingdoms, and allied themselves with the monarch of Myohuang.

In 1600, a Portuguese cabin-boy named Philip de Brito y Nicote came to Myanmar, beginning one of the most legendary tales in Burma’s history. De Brito took a job with the king of Rahkine, who had by that time conquered Bago, and soon started constructing forts in the city. De Brito then took a trip to Goa, married the viceroy’s daughter, and returned to Bago with men and weapons. As a wedding present to himself, he conquered Myanmar, declared himself king, and set about destroying Buddhist temples. De Brito ruled for 13 years, until the locals finally laid siege to his fortress. After 34 days the bastion fell, and the foreign tyrant was coolly impaled on a wooden stake, his grueling execution lasting three days.

Despite the fall of De Brito’s personal kingdom, the European presence in Myanmar was there to stay, e