My vanished world

This being notice of a short memoir from a daughter of the man who went on to be the last Sawbwa (otherwise Sao Hpa) of Lawksawk, one of the 33 Shan States, then to the east of Burma proper. The Shan State as a whole being most of the high ground to the east of Mandalay in the map above, an area of around 50,000 square miles and with a population at the time of around 2m, now near 6m people. For scale in the snap above, Mandalay to Taunggyi is about 75 miles.

China to the north east, India to the north west. The Shan population is mostly derived from various waves of migrants from China over the past two thousand years. Shan as in Assam and Siam, also known as Tai as in Thailand.

Mandalay is at latitude 20°N, a good deal nearer the equator than London at 50°N, but the Shan plateau is around 4,000 feet above sea level, so the climate is warm, about right for oranges, but not as hot as the lowlands. 

Government

After the British invaded Burma in the late nineteenth century, they allowed the hereditary Sawbwas to continue, with a thin layer of supervision being exercised from the town of Taunggyi, perhaps mirroring the arrangements in next door India with its (rather larger) princely states.

I have not checked, but I imagine that British rule brought a degree of peace and stability to what had been a rather unsettled region. The British also maintained a decent balance between the Burmese majority and the various minorities strung around the lowland centre, a balance between lowlands and highlands. The language of government – and higher education – was English rather than Burmese, which suited the Shans – at least those rich enough to have a higher education – well enough.

In English terms, in size, most of the Shan States would be somewhere between a district (like Epsom & Ewell) and a county (like Surrey).

The Shan aristocracy, on this account, come across as being rather like the county families of 1900 England – with this family at least having English given names as well as Shan names. Some of them were educated in schools and universities in the UK.

Burma became independent as the Union of Burma in 1948, but in 1962 the country was taken over by the Burmese dominated army in a coup and the Shans became an oppressed minority. The Sawbwas went to prison, losing most of their property and income in the process – the income which was what paid for education in the UK for their children. A large fraction of the Shan aristocracy left, leaving most of their former wealth behind.

The present author, in England at the time, married and stayed here, ending up, before she and her husband retired, in a Cheshire village bakery.

Odds and ends

In the olden days, the Sawbwas were polygamous, with several wives and lots of children. Children who jostled for power and position, not always peacefully, rather in the way of Saudi princely children now.

Lawksawk was occupied by the Japanese during the second world war and while there was some bad behaviour by their troops, this ruling family got along well enough with the occupiers – having got along well enough with the British before them.

The author went to a Catholic girls’ boarding school – seemingly one of a number in Shan State at that time – and then to Rangoon University, where tuition was in English. After 1962, this changed to Burmese and standards, at least on this account, fell. By this time, the author was in London, having got a scholarship for further study at University College (UCL).

She comes across as someone who is interested in food – with Chinese takeaway being something of a favourite from childhood. We are not told what propelled her into village bakery in Cheshire; a bakery which I failed to turn up in either Bing or gmaps.

Conclusions

An interesting, easy-read memoir from the end of the Shan State. Now not very happily incorporated into Greater Burma, that is to say Myanmar. 

We are given what one might call a rather cosy view of life among the Sawbwas. But I dare say there are Shans now – perhaps in exile or perhaps chafing under the Burmese army, greedy and crude as it is – perhaps not that different as far as that goes to the Japanese occupiers of the 1940s – who take a rather different view of life under the Sawbwas; from among the labouring masses who fed the comfortable life of said Sawbwas and their families. And I dare say there was change in the air in the 1950s, before the rule of the Sawbwas was brought to a crude and abrupt end by the Burmese army in 1962.

Now moving onto reference 3, one of the few references at the back of the present book.

PS 1: in the course of posting this, I thought to take another bacon sandwich from the caravan in Longmead Road. Sadly, no bread and I had to make do with a bap, which was not very fresh. In the course of which bap, I learn that there is a kitchen and joinery operation, called Benchmarx, part of the Travis Perkins family, with a new branch housed in the new Travis Perkins Yard in Roy Wickens Way, nearly opposite the caravan. I dare say we would have given them a look when we were choosing our new kitchen had I known that they were there. See reference 4.

PS 2: some days later: poking around the population statistics, I am reminded that it is all very difficult. Are you counting the people in what is now the Shan State, the Shans in Shan State or the Shans in Burma? What about all the army units stationed there? And I have failed to find any decent historical runs of data. I dare say they are there, but I have not yet found them. Somewhere around 2m in the 1940’s and 6m now is about the best that I can do.

References

Reference 1: My vanished world: The true story of a Shan princess – Nel Adams – 2000.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/01/in-transition.html. My last substantive notice of Burma.

Reference 3: The Land and People of Burma – C. Maxwell-Lefroy – 1963.

Reference 4: https://www.benchmarxkitchens.co.uk/.