Burma Under the Restored Toungoo Dynasty, 1600–1752

When the united kingdom of Burma fell apart in 1599 the condition of the old Mon kingdom of Pegu was indeed wretched. Not only was the capital city in ruins but the whole countryside was laid waste by the invading armies of Arakan, Toungoo and Siam. Syriam was in Arakanese hands, and thither came Philip de Brito y Nicote, a Portuguese in the service of King Min Razagyi, to take charge of the customhouse and control the Portuguese living there under their own laws. With him went two Jesuit missionaries, Pimenta and Boves, both of whom wrote accounts of their experiences, translations of which were published by Samuel Purchas in his Pilgrimes. 1 Boves wrote: ‘I also went thither with Philip Brito, and in fifteen days arrived at Syriam, the chief port in Pegu. It is a lamentable spectacle to see the banks of the rivers set with infinite fruit-bearing trees, now overwhelmed with ruins of gilded temples and noble edifices; the ways and fields full of skulls and bones of wretched Peguans, killed or famished or cast into the river, in such numbers that the multitude of carcasses prohibits the way and passage of any ship.’ 2

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