Arakanese/Rakhine history
Websites/Multiple Documents
| Title: | | Scholars' Column |
| Description/subject: | | "Collected Papers and Articles on Arakan written by various eminent scholars around the world".
Several scholarly articles on Arakanese history (not to be confused with the political items which have been slipped into the same page. These have their own, different value.). |
| Language: | | English |
| Source/publisher: | | Rakhapura.com (Arakanese nationalist site) |
| Format/size: | | html |
| Date of entry/update: | | 12 November 2010 |
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Individual Documents
| Title: | | History Behind Arakan State Conflict |
| Date of publication: | | 12 July 2012 |
| Description/subject: | | "Arakan history expert Dr. Jacques P. Leider gives an exclusive interview to The Irrawaddy in light of the recent sectarian strife in western Burma. Leider has been conducting research as well as contributing articles to academic journals on Arakan State for more than two decades. He has worked with SEAMEO-CHAT, the regional center for history and tradition in Rangoon, and is currently head of the French School of Asian Studies in Chiang Mai, Thailand." |
| Author/creator: | | Jacques Leider (interviewed by "The Irrawaddy") |
| Language: | | English |
| Source/publisher: | | "The Irrawaddy" |
| Format/size: | | html |
| Date of entry/update: | | 04 August 2012 |
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| Title: | | Myanmar’s Rohingya Dilemma |
| Date of publication: | | 09 July 2012 |
| Description/subject: | | "In the past, the people who called themselves “Rohingya” had to contend with successive
military governments’ indifference to recognizing — or regularizing - their status as persons
living on the territory of Myanmar. The latest incidence of anger against the Rohingyas,
however, did not have immigration woes at its source. An unfortunate crime of rape and
murder — committed by Muslim men against a Buddhist woman in a strongly nationalistic
state — escalated into communal violence fraught with racial and religious undertones. The
views, many of them inflammatory, on social media platforms indicate deep-seated prejudices
that threaten the unconsolidated stability in Myanmar under President Thein Sein’s
reform-minded administration. President Thein Sein made a statement on 10 June to calm
seething sentiments on the present conflict. Myanmar also received the visit of United Nations
(UN) Special Envoy Vijay Nambiar to the conflict areas. The measures have resulted
in lessening tensions somewhat, and won praise from the European Union and the United
States2. Responding to questions by media, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi highlighted the importance
of handling the situation with “delicacy and sensitivity” while also underscoring the
need for the rule of law as “essential [..] to put an end to all conflicts in the country”.
However, the Rohingya issue is still far from reaching a lasting solution...".....THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND EVOLUTION OF THE CONFLICT...THE ROHINGYA AND THE CITIZENSHIP LAWS...CHALLENGES AHEAD |
| Author/creator: | | Tin Maung Maung Than and Moe Thuzar |
| Language: | | English |
| Source/publisher: | | Institute of Southeast Asian Studies ("Perspective") |
| Format/size: | | pdf (510K) |
| Date of entry/update: | | 12 July 2012 |
|
| Title: | | Between India and Southeast Asia- Arakan, Burmas Forgotten Kingdom |
| Date of publication: | | 28 December 2008 |
| Description/subject: | | "For more a millennium the policy we know as Arakan existed as a culturally strategic border state, the only
state in Southeast Asia to be connected to India by both land and sea routes. The study of its culture is of
particular interest as it reveals which elements of Indian cultural were adopted in Arakan and in the land to
its east. We can then ask why some elements and not others were adopted, and attempted to relate this to
the political, social and religious developments of the wider region..." |
| Author/creator: | | Pamela Gutman |
| Language: | | English |
| Source/publisher: | | Rakhapura Arakan Information Website |
| Format/size: | | html |
| Date of entry/update: | | 12 November 2010 |
|
| Title: | | Arakan and Bengal : the rise and decline of the Mrauk U kingdom (Burma) from the fifteenth to the seventeeth century AD |
| Date of publication: | | 13 March 2008 |
| Description/subject: | | Abstract: "The Arakanese kingdom (Rakhine state in modern Myanmar) grew from the fifteenth century AD from a small agrarian state with its nucleus in the hart of the Kaladan valley to a significant local power by the early seventeenth century. Arakan asserted its influence across the northern shores of the Bay of Bengal. In the first decades of the seventeenth century the Arakanese kings of Mrauk U received tribute from local rulers between Dhaka and Pegu, cities more than a thousand miles apart. The Mughal rulers of Bengal were even forced to build a string of forts to defend the areas around Dhaka and Hugli against Arakanese incursions. From the middle of the seventeenth century the Arakanese state was gripped by a seemingly sudden decline that would culminate in civil war at the end of the seventeenth century and the loss of control over south-eastern Bengal, followed by the conquest of Arakan by the Burmese in the eighteenth century. The rapid rise and decline of the Arakanese state between the early fifteenth and the end of the seventeenth century is the subject of this dissertation."... Keywords: Arakan,
Bay of Bengal,
Bengal,
Burma,
History,
Mrauk U,
Mughal,
Rakhine,
State formation,
VOC. |
| Author/creator: | | Stephan van Galen |
| Language: | | English |
| Source/publisher: | | van Galen, S.E.A., 2008, Doctoral thesis, Leiden University |
| Format/size: | | html, pdf (17 pdf files accessed frim an html page) |
| Date of entry/update: | | 04 August 2012 |
|
| Title: | | Towards Understanding Arakan History (Part I, II and III) |
| Date of publication: | | 2007 |
| Description/subject: | | PREFACE: A mirror reflects exactly any object that stands before it. So does history reflect the past of a people or a nation? History gives us knowledge of past. But history can be a forgotten past, especially for literally less advanced people. After a few generations, history cannot be remembered unless it is written or recorded, and observation of illiterate tribes all over the world shows, that they are helplessly wrong with regard to the events of their history for more than a couple of generations back. Thus recording of history in various forms took place from the early stage of human society.
Records of history are very important such as roots are for trees. Without proper records of history it is very difficult for a people to go ahead. For future planning we need the knowledge of past.
Hence, I have been studying the history of Arakan in particular and of Myanmar in general and have been collecting some important facts and records related to them. Here some of my friends requested me to compile a brief but precise history of Arakan with special attention to the evaluation of Muslim society there and I complied with their request. Writing a history book needs knowledge and experience. It is a big job for me as it will consume time, mind and energy. At the same time I was not free enough because of my personal engagements. Non-availability of some reference books is another factor. Next most of the history books on Arakan, by Arakanese themselves are found to be irrelevant with the latest researches of scholars. Many facts there are illogical, imaginary and exaggerative in nature.
So to bring historical nucleus in to light with authentic references and correct documentations become an essential part of my task here. Further, facts concerning Muslim’s role in Arakan, traditionally have been covered ‘up or distorted. In this treatise my attempt to bring them in to light may be subject to refutation from some circles. Especially three historical nucleuses here may be found deviated from our traditional concept though they are real and true. The main object of this treatise indeed is to shed light on these points. |
| Author/creator: | | Abu Anin |
| Language: | | English |
| Source/publisher: | | A Study on the Issue of Ethnicity in Arakan, Myanmar |
| Format/size: | | html |
| Alternate URLs: | | http://www.kaladanpress.org/v3/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=866:towards-und... (Part II)
http://www.kaladanpress.org/v3/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=900:towards-und... (Part III) |
| Date of entry/update: | | 12 November 2010 |
|
| Title: | | The Development of a Muslim Enclave in Arakan (Rakhine) State of Burma (Myanmar) |
| Date of publication: | | September 2005 |
| Description/subject: | | Conclusion:
"After Burma gained independence, a concentration of nearly ninety
percent of the area’s population, the distinguishing characteristics
of their own culture and the Islamic faith formed an ethnic and
religious minority group in the western fringe of the republic. For
successive generations their ethnicity and Islam have been
practically not distinguishable. At the beginning they adopted the slogan, “Pakistan Jindabad,” (Victory to Pakistan). This policy
faded away when they could not gain support from the government
of Pakistan. Later they began to call for the establishment of an
autonomous region instead. Pakistan’s attitude toward the
Muslims in Arakan was different from the Islamabad’s policy
toward Kashmiris. During the Independence War in Bangladesh
most of the Muslims in Arakan supported West Pakistan. After
Bangladesh gained independence Dhaka followed the policy of
disowning those Chittagonians. Consequently they had to insist
firmly on their identity as Rohingyas. Their leaders began to
complain that the term “Chittagonian Bengali” had arbitrarily been
applied to them. But the majority of the ethnic group, being
illiterate agriculturalists in the rural areas, still prefers their
identity as Bengali Muslims.
Although they have showed the collective political interest for
more than five decades since Burma gained independence, their
political and cultural rights have not so far been recognized and
guaranteed. On the contrary the demand for the recognition of
their rights sounds a direct challenge to the right of autonomy and
the myth of survival for the Arakanese majority in their homeland.
A symbiotic coexistence has so far been inconceivable because of
the political climate of mistrust and fear between the two races and
the policy of the military junta. The Muslims from the other parts
of Arakan kept themselves aloof from the Rohingya cause as well.
Thus the cause of Rohingyas finds a little support outside their
own community, and their claims of an earlier historical tie to
Burma are insupportable." |
| Author/creator: | | Aye Chan |
| Language: | | English |
| Source/publisher: | | SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, Vol. 3, No. 2, Autumn 2005, ISSN 1479- |
| Format/size: | | pdf (246K) |
| Alternate URLs: | | http://web.archive.org/web/20070930165556/web.soas.ac.uk/burma/3_2.htm |
| Date of entry/update: | | 03 October 2010 |
|
| Title: | | Interview with Guest Editor Stephan van Galen |
| Date of publication: | | October 2001 |
| Description/subject: | | "By the time of his first visit to Arakan in 1999,
Van Galen had already read about Southeast
Asia and Arakan for several years. At a young
age, he had read the children's book, De
Scheepsjongens van Bontekoe, which was
based on the seventeenth-century travel logs of
an East India ship's captain named Bontekoe,
who was shipwrecked in the Indian Ocean. 'The story had become a classic already during the
seventeenth century. Of course, I never realized just to what extent the stories were true until I
started doing my research on Arakan, and going through the archival material I came across his
name again,' he recalls. But visiting the country one studies as a historian is felt by Van Galen to be
a vital part in the process of understanding it..." |
| Author/creator: | | Tanja Chute |
| Language: | | English |
| Source/publisher: | | Newsletter, Issue 25, International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden) |
| Date of entry/update: | | 03 June 2003 |
|
| Title: | | Rediscovering Arakan: Studying cultural change on an Asian frontier |
| Date of publication: | | October 2001 |
| Description/subject: | | "Covering the biggest part of Myanmar's northwestern sea coast, Arakan faces the Bay of
Bengal and shares its northern border with Bangladesh and India. Called either Roshang
(in Bengal), Rakhangapura (in Sri Lankan chronicles), Yakhai (in Ayutthayan chronicles),
or Rakhine by its own inhabitants, the study of the history of Arakan has suffered from
the area's peripheral situation, at least in the divisions of Asia familiar to us..." |
| Author/creator: | | Jacques P. Leider |
| Language: | | English |
| Source/publisher: | | Newsletter, Issue 25, International Institute for Asian Studies (Leiden) |
| Date of entry/update: | | 03 June 2003 |
|
| Title: | | Rise of a Mainland Trading State: Rahkaing Under the Early Mrauk-U Kings, c. 1430-1603 |
| Date of publication: | | 1998 |
| Description/subject: | | This study of the rise of the maritime kingdom of Rahkaing (Arakan) in the 15th and 16th centuries attempts to demonstrate how the kings of Danya-wati gradually drew other power centers in the Rahkaing littoral (including Mekha-wati, Dwara-wati, and Chittagong) into its political orbit. Vital to this political centralization were the collateral processes of increasing maritime trade, demographic growth spurred by resettled war captives, the suppression of rival lowland tribes, supplies of firearms, and the development of a multi-directional system of religious patronage. By the end of the 16th century, Mrauk-U rulers, as both Buddhist kings and Islamic sultans, controlled the entire Rahkaing littoral as one kingdom and had begun their expansion into neighboring regions as distant as Dacca in Bengal and Pegu in Burma. |
| Author/creator: | | Michael W. Charney |
| Language: | | English |
| Source/publisher: | | Journal of Burma Studies Vol. 3 (1998) |
| Format/size: | | pdf (2.19MB) |
| Alternate URLs: | | http://www.grad.niu.edu/burma/webpgs/abstractsVol3.html |
| Date of entry/update: | | 10 March 2009 |
|
| Title: | | ARAKAN, MIN YAZAGYI, AND THE PORTUGUESE: |
| Date of publication: | | June 1993 |
| Description/subject: | | "A thesis presented to the Faculty of The College of Arts and
Sciences of Ohio University in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree Master of Arts
Michael W. Charney
(June 1993)..."Until Min Yazagyi’s reign, then, I think that the Arakanese were
the dominant partner in the Arakanese-Portuguese relationship. When
Min Yazagyi forgot the importance of the Arakanese king’s role in
maintaining this dominance in their relationship, however, the
Portuguese were given the opportunity to declare themselves
independent. In response, Min Yazagyi, preoccupied with himself and his
royal regalia, allowed his royal court to “fall prey” to factionalism and
wasted the best of the Arakanese military forces in poorly-crafted
campaigns under the command of local military leaders of doubtful
abilities. This hurt Arakan’s credibility as a powerful empire and
weakened the international alliance system, which had been carefully
constructed by past Arakanese kings. Further, the repeated Arakanese
military disasters presented a tremendous drain on Arakanese economic
resources which Min Yazagyi was not able to remedy. The collapse of
Arakanese dominance in the Arakanese-Portuguese relationship,
however, was short-lived. Min Khamaung, Min Yazagyi’s son and
successor, brought the Arakanese government back firmly under
monarchical control through his careful selection of new, capable
military and civilian leaders. Min Yazagyi, in the tradition of Min Bin,
sought a new foreign model, the Dutch, to help him defeat the
Portuguese. But Min Khamaung deserves full credit for crushing the
rebellious Portuguese who served the pirate “king” Sebastião Gonsalves y
Tibau and brought an end to the last of the Portuguese rebellions. In
Pegu, however, Min Khamaung was too late to reassert Arakanese
dominance, since the Avan king, Anaukpetlun, had already crushed De
Brito at Syriam and had brought Pegu under firm Avan control. Thus, a
combination of new Arakanese leaders, the selection of a new foreign
model, the resurrection of the nearly-destroyed maritime-based
Arakanese economy, and Min Khamaung’s military genius, saved Arakan
at least partially from the damage it had suffered under Min Yazagyi and
the attendant Portuguese revolts.
I think it should also be mentioned that the Portuguese
mercenaries captured in both Syriam and the Sundiva campaigns, by
Ava and Arakan, were forced to continue their service to both kingdoms
as slaves. Anaukpetlun turned his Portuguese captives into a hereditary
class of artillerymen whose descendants served in the Avan army for
several centuries.595 In the case of Arakan, Min Khamaung, once
himself a prisoner of the Portuguese, placed his Portuguese captives into
Arakanese military units which guarded the northwestern border of
Arakan in Bengal. The Arakanese-Portuguese relationship thus can be
seen as a continuum of Arakanese dominance, with the exception of the
hiatus of the reign of Min Yazagyi..." |
| Author/creator: | | Michael W. Charney |
| Language: | | English |
| Source/publisher: | | Ohio University |
| Format/size: | | pdf (800K) |
| Alternate URLs: | | http://www.archive.org/details/ArakanMinYazagyiAndThePortuguese1993
http://ia310814.us.archive.org/2/items/ArakanMinYazagyiAndThePortuguese1993/22Charney1993thesis.pdf |
| Date of entry/update: | | 12 November 2010 |
|
| Title: | | Ancient Arakan |
| Date of publication: | | 1976 |
| Description/subject: | | Abstract: "The early history of Arakan has been generally considered to be that of a province of eastern India, and hence its study has been neglected by both Indian and Southeast Asian historians. This dissertation seeks to examine the dynamics of the history from the beginnings of urbanization until the rise of the Burmese empire which subsequently dominated Arakanese culture. The first chapter deals with the geographical and ethnolinguistic background to the development of the earliest cities. In the second, all the inscriptions of the period, in Sanskrit, Pali and Pyu are catalogued and edited. The inscriptions issued by the kings establish a chronology for the period and illustrate the nature of the cult surrounding the institution of kingship, while copper-plate and votive inscriptions elucidate the nature of state organisation and the popular religion. Chapter Three deals with the coinage which emerged following the development of a centralised economy, and discusses the impetus for this and the role of the king on whom the prosperity of the country depended. A comparison with similar coin types in Southeast Asia is made and the catalogue includes all the coins yet discovered. The sites of the most important monuments are discussed in Chapter Four, which catalogues all the architectural and sculptural remains. A comparative analysis of the Buddhist and Hindu images and of the minor arts reveals, to a greater extent that do the inscriptions, the nature of contact with India and the rest of Southeast Asia. The conclusion deals with the political and cultural history which thus emerges, examining in detail the rationale behind the development of the concept of divine kingship in Arakan." |
| Author/creator: | | Pamela Gutman |
| Language: | | English |
| Source/publisher: | | The Australian National University |
| Format/size: | | html page with links to pdf sections |
| Alternate URLs: | | http://hdl.handle.net/1885/47122 |
| Date of entry/update: | | 25 November 2007 |
|
| Title: | | Rohingya as Burmese Ethnic in Army Tatmadaw Journal of 1961 |
| Date of publication: | | 18 July 1961 |
| Description/subject: | | Mujahideen surrender to Burma Army in 1961 at Buthi Daung township of Rakhine State, Robbi Hular lead to Mujahid group and General Aung Gyi accepted and welcome to surrender group.... ၁၉၆၁ ခုႏွစ္က ရခုိင္ျပည္နယ္ ဘူးသီးေတာင္ ၿမိဳ႔နယ္ တြင္ မူဂ်ာဟီဒင္ သူပုန္အုပ္စုကို ေရာ္ဘီဟူလာ ဦးေဆာင္၍ လက္နက္ ခ်၊ ဗုိလ္ မွဴးခ်ဳပ္ေအာင္ႀကီးမွ လက္နက္ခ် သူမ်ားကို လက္ခံႀကိဳဆို။ |
| Language: | | Burmese/ ျမန္မာဘာသာ |
| Source/publisher: | | Burma Army |
| Format/size: | | pdf (1.98MB) |
| Date of entry/update: | | 30 September 2012 |
|
| Title: | | An Account of the Frontier Between Ava and the Part of Bengal Adjacent to the Karnaphuli River |
| Date of publication: | | 1825 |
| Description/subject: | | Editor’s note:
This article by Francis Hamilton, also known as Francis Buchanan, first appeared in The
Edinburgh Journal of Science (vol. 3, April-October, 1825, pp. 32-44). Despite its relatively late
dating, Hamilton’s understanding of the area and the people were not substantially different
from those found in the his earlier diaries during his travels in the area in 1798.
M.W. C. ... "...The river called Naaf by Europeans, which enters the sea in about 20º 50’ north, for a short way
forms the boundary between Ava and Bengal; and across it is the only communication known
between the kingdom of Arakan subject to Ava and Chatigang subject to Britain. North from the
forks of this river, so far as I could learn in 1798, there was no district boundary; but there
extends north, along the whole of the Chatigang district, a mountainous frontier occupied by
several rude tribes. Through this region flow many rivers; some into the sea, either through
Chatigang or Arakan, and some into the Erawadi; and the high land at the sources of such of
these rivers as run through the district of Chatigang was commonly supposed to be the actual
boundary. The rude tribes indeed, which occupy the hilly countries on both sides of the central
eight, claim independence, and support it, so far as their slender means will admit..." |
| Author/creator: | | Francis Buchanan (aka Francis Hamilton) |
| Language: | | English |
| Source/publisher: | | SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, Vol. 1, No. 2, Autumn 2003 |
| Format/size: | | pdf (51K) |
| Alternate URLs: | | http://web.archive.org/web/20070609092430/web.soas.ac.uk/burma/vol__i,_no__2.htm |
| Date of entry/update: | | 09 April 2004 |
|
| Title: | | A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the languages spoken in the Burma Empire |
| Date of publication: | | 1799 |
| Description/subject: | | Reprint: Original date of publication 1799...
"Francis Buchanan published his “A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the Languages
Spoken in the Burma Empire” in 1799, in the fifth volume of Asiatic Researches. This
piece provides one of the first major Western surveys of the languages of Burma. But
the article goes beyond this and provides important data on the ethno-cultural identities
and identifications of the various population groups in the first half of Bò-daw-hpayà’s
reign (1782-1819). For these reasons, the article is republished here.
The article is reproduced in its entirety, with slight modifications as follows...
The original citation for the article is as follows:
Francis Buchanan. “A Comparative Vocabulary of Some of the languages spoken in
the Burma Empire.” Asiatic Researches 5 (1799): 219-240.
M. W. C. |
| Author/creator: | | Francis Buchanan (aka Francis Hamilton) |
| Language: | | English |
| Source/publisher: | | SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, Vol. 1, No., 1 (March 2003) |
| Format/size: | | pdf (117K) |
| Alternate URLs: | | http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/8050/ |
| Date of entry/update: | | 07 December 2010 |
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