MALAY KINGSHIP IN A BURMESE PERSPECTIVE

What is the significance of monarchy in the modern history of South-East Asia? In this essay, I do not examine the administrative details of government or the variety of Indian and Islamic ideological elements which are connected with kingship. I am concerned with the conception of monarchy and with the way in which that conception influenced Malay and Burmese experience and behaviour in the colonial period. The idea of kingship, I suggest, has been underestimated as a force in the indigenous societies of South-East Asia. In particular, there is evidence that kingship was capable of mediating the impact of colonial rule. My principal interest is Malaya, but it is the situation in colonial Burma which provokes me to inquire into the rôle played by kingship in the last century of Malay social history. In Burma, the British abolished monarchy, and the dramatic consequences of this act suggest the need to re-examine the implications of the retention of kingship in ‘British Malaya’.