Mapping ethnicity in nineteenth-century Burma: When ‘categories of people’ (lumyo) became ‘nations’

Successive wars and the establishment of a border between the kingdom of Burma and British India in the nineteenth century challenged Burmese conceptions of sovereignty and political space. This essay investigates how European, and more specifically Anglo-American, notions of race, nation, and consu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Southeast Asian studies (Singapore) Vol. 50; no. 3; pp. 347 - 364
Main Author: Candier, Aurore
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.09.2019
Subjects:
19th century
Annexation
Buddhism
Burmese language
Classification
Cosmology
Ethnic groups
Ethnicity
History
Mapping
Protection
Race
Semantic change
Semantics
Social structure
Sociopolitical factors
Sovereignty
Terminology
Myanmar
United Kingdom
Myanmar (Burma)
ISSN:0022-4634, 1474-0680
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Successive wars and the establishment of a border between the kingdom of Burma and British India in the nineteenth century challenged Burmese conceptions of sovereignty and political space. This essay investigates how European, and more specifically Anglo-American, notions of race, nation, and consular protection to nationals, progressively informed the Burmese concepts of ‘categories of people’ (lumyo) and ‘subject’ (kyun). First, I present the semantic evolution of these concepts in the 1820s–1830s, following the annexation of the western Burmese province of Arakan by British India in 1824. Then, I argue that the Burmese concept of lumyo was progressively associated with the European concept of ‘nations’ in the 1850s–1860s, following the annexation of Lower Burma in 1852. Finally, I uncover developments in the 1870s, when British consular protection extended to several freshly categorised ‘nations’, such as Shan, Karenni, and Kachin.
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ISSN:0022-4634
1474-0680
DOI:10.1017/S0022463419000419