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4. Indian Immigration to Lower Burma in the First Phase of Development
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4 INDIAN IMMIGRATION TO LOWER BURMA IN THE FIRST PHASE OF DEVELOPMENT During the first years after the 1852 annexation, British officials felt that migration from the Dry Zone and other areas within Burma would not be sufficient to satisfy the demand for agricultural and industrial labor in the Delta.! In retrospect, it seems logical that these officials would come to regard India as the chief source of potential immigrant settlers and laborers for Lower Burma. Burma was part of the Indian Empire, many of the Indian districts which fringed the Bay of Bengal were densely populated and famine-prone, and sea communications between the Indian subcontinent and Lower Burma were rapidly improving. Although some officials did assert that India should be the main source of immigrants,2 others, including the Chief-Commissioner, Arthur Phayre, initially sought to attract immigrants from China. Chinese immigrants were employed on a number of early public works projects, and proposals were made for schemes to attract Chinese settlers to the Delta. Officials, like Phayre, argued that preference should be given to the Chinese because they were more like the Burmese than the Indians, and because they were far superior to either the Indians or the Burmese in "skill and industry.,,3 1. RAP, 1855-56, par. 237. 2. Ibid. 3. RAP, 1856-57, par. 177; Government of India, Secret and Political Correspondence , range 201, vol. 15,20 February 1857, no. 842; Government of India, Political 83 84 Early Phase of Growth, 1852-1907 These early proposals notwithstanding, Chinese immigrants were to play only a secondary role in the development of the Delta. In 1901, after half a century of British rule, the Chinese community in Lower Burma numbered only about 34,400, or less than .8 of 1 percent of the total population.4 A number of factors accounted for the low level of Chinese immigration to Burma. To begin with, most Chinese immigrants to Lower Burma and the rest of Southeast Asia were from the provinces of Fukien and Kwangtung in South China and they normally traveled by sea.s Burma was at the far end of the sea routes from these areas, and there was no regular steamship service between China and Burma on a scale comparable to that between South China and Siam and other Southeast Asian areas.6 In addition, the Chinese community in Burma was small and uninfluential compared to wellestablished communities in Siam, Malaya, Indo-China, the Philippines, and the Netherlands Indies. Entrepreneurial and mercantile opportunities were more limited in Burma, where British and Indian merchants and financiers became dominant in the last half of the nineteenth century, than in Siam and Malaya, where the Chinese had strong positions in mining, plantation agriculture, processing industries, trade, and finance. This factor was of vital importance to Chinese agriculturists, who made up the larger portion of immigrants to Southeast Asia, for their ambition was to advance socially and economically in the name of family and lineage. Therefore, they considered mercantile opportunities in Southeast Asia a primary avenue of upward mobility.7 Finally, the volume of Chinese immigration was limited by the fact that few laborers went to Lower Burma after the first decade of British rule. The immigration of Chinese coolies was strongly opposed by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in Rangoon, whose success was demonstrated by the fact that most Chinese in the Delta throughout the British period were engaged in mercantile activities.8 and Foreign Proceedings (Genera!), range 205, vol. 10, June 1862, nos. 58--{)0, India Office Records, London, Eng. 4. Burma Census, 1901, Imperial Tables, vol. 2, population by race. These figures would presumably include those Chinese who spoke Burmese and sons of Chinese and Burmese marriages who were raised as Chinese. It would not include daughters of mixed marriages who were raised as Burmese. See Max and Bertha Ferrars, Burma (London, 1900), pp. 156-57. 5. G. William Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand (Ithaca, N.Y., 1957), pp. 28-29, 35-52; G. William Skinner, "The Chinese Minority," in Indonesia, ed. Ruth T. McVey (New Haven, Conn., 1963), pp. 101-2; Norton Ginsburg and Chester Roberts,Malaya (Seattle, Wash., 1958), pp. 249-52. 6. Skinner, Chinese in Thailand, pp. 32,41-45; Edgar Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine Life, 1850-1898 (New Haven, Conn., 1965), p. 61. 7. Skinner, Chinese in Thailand, pp. 92-95. 8. Dudley Stamp, "Burma: An Undeveloped Monsoon Country," Geographical Review 20, no. 1 (January 1930): 108. Stamp does not indicate...