The campaign of the lost footsteps
The pacification of Burma, 1885-95
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5724246 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ian F W Beckett (University of Kent, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 4-5 |
| Pages | 994-1019 |
| Publication date | 2019-07-29 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Small Wars and Insurgencies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0959-2318 • E-ISSN: 1743-9558 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09592318.2019.1638552 |
| OpenAlex | W2970070197 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 15 |
What Rudyard Kipling called the ‘campaign of lost footsteps’ was the longest campaign fought by the Victorian army. The conquest of Upper Burma, an area of 140,000 sq. miles with a population of four million, took only three weeks in November 1885 and was accomplished with minimum cost. However, the removal and deportation of the Burmese King and dismantling of all traditional authority dismantled led to growing resistance to British rule leading to an increasingly difficult guerrilla war. Though the Burmese guerrillas were characterised by the British as mere bandits or dacoits, many were former soldiers along with Buddhist monks. The extremely difficult nature of campaigning in the terrain and climate of Burma was not sufficiently appreciated by the War Office, who viewed the conflict as a ‘subaltern’s war’ and ‘police’ work. Intended regime change was also not accompanied by any consideration of the likely implications. Prolonged insurgency necessitated deploying a force far larger than originally intended; though order was finally secured by 1895, the campaign proved destructive of Burmese society while British recruitment of hill tribes into the police and armed forces sowed the seeds for future divisions
Ancient history · Burmese · CONQUEST · Courage · Deportation · Immigration · Insurgency · Political science · Politics · Population · Refugee · Sociology · Subaltern · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Demography · History · Law · Military History and Strategy · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies
Small wars
A History of Modern Burma
The Making of Modern Burma
Colonial Armies in Southeast Asia
Art. XIV.—On the Súrya Siddhánta, and the Hindú Method of Calculating Eclipses
Buddhism and Insurrection in Burma, 1886–1890
General Roberts, the Occupation of Kabul, and the Problems of Transition, 1879–1880
Small Wars
The Sepoy and the Raj
The British “Pacification” of Burma
Pacification
Involuntary Sightseeing
The Pagoda War. Lord Dufferin and the Fall of the Kingdom of Ava,1885-6
| Citations per year | 0.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2024 (3) |
| Highly cited | No |