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Identifying the ‘agriculturists’ in the Burma Delta in the colonial period: A new perspective on agriculturists based on a village tract's registers of holdings from the 1890s to the 1920s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2011

Asuka Mizuno
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Abstract

According to the existing studies on Myanmar's economic history, agricultural land in the Lower Myanmar delta was transferred from ‘agriculturists’ to ‘non-agriculturists’ under British colonial rule. However, a clear distinction could not be drawn between the agriculturists and non-agriculturists as was generally thought with respect to their economic activity. More importantly, the categories could be applied interchangeably. The purpose of this study is to reconsider the very concept of ‘agriculturist’ as a colonial category in British Burma by exploring the hitherto unused register of holdings (Register IA, U pain hmatpoun sayin).

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , October 2011 , pp. 405 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 2011

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References

1 Siok-Hwa, Cheng, The rice industry of Burma, 1852–1940 (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1968), pp. 270–1Google Scholar, Appendix vi.c; Brown, Ian, A colonial economy in crisis: Burma's rice cultivators and the world depression of the 1930s (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2005), p. 37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Adas, Michael, The Burma delta: Economic development and social change on an Asian rice frontier, 1852–1941 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974)Google Scholar, p. 14. Adas quoted this figure from his Ph.D. thesis, but judging from the colonial statistics, the original source of this figure was statistics compiled by the Land Record Department.

3 Report of the committee to examine the land revenue system of Burma (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, 1928), pp. 50–1Google Scholar.

4 John Sydenham Furnivall, An introduction to the political economy of Burma, 3rd edn (Rangoon: Burma Book Club, 1957), p. 81Google Scholar.

5 Cheng, Rice industry of Burma; Adas, Burma delta, pp. 235–6; Ian Brown, A colonial economy in crisis, p. 121.

6 Report of the committee to examine the land revenue system of Burma, pp. 50–1. Before the 1920s, the official names of the registers of holdings were Akhundaw thit nanbat sayin [Land revenue roll number one], Nanbat thit akhundaw sayin [Annual register of holdings and revenue roll] and Hmatpoun saout thit [Register 1]. The names and contents differed slightly in every version.

7 This is clear evidence of the fact that the British officers showed no interest in checking records at the lowest level of land administration. For British land policy, refer to Brown, A colonial economy in crisis, pp. 17–22.

8 Myanmar terms that correspond to the word ‘agriculturist’ in English had not yet been coined in the colonial period. As mentioned later, the register of holdings was maintained almost every 10 years starting from 1894–95. In the register of holdings for 1894–95, we are able to identify the occupation of the landowners only in cases where the owners had leased their land to tenants and provided descriptions in the extra space: Myei shin le thama or koung the akhun than [‘landlord of rice cultivator’ or ‘trader taking responsibility for tax’]. After 1903–04, the register began to use abbreviations in Myanmar letters, la or ka for le lout, le thama or koung the, following the landowners' names. After the 1920s, the registers of holdings feature a parallel description in English in which the term ‘agriculturist’ was translated into le ya lout sa thu. In the register deed or application for compensation of land nationalisation after independence, the occupation of the landowner was expressed as le lout. For example, Register of deeds, Maubin district, Maubin township, 1923, deed no. 151, 269, Le ya myei yogyei ya yan shaut ta hmu [Application of compensation for land nationalisation], 227/la ka, 1955–1956. In this paper, I use the term le lout to translate the noun ‘agriculturist’, although grammatically speaking le lout is a verb.

9 Judson, Adoniram, Judson's Burmese–English dictionary (Tokyo: Hotaka Book, 1989, Reprint of the 1883 edition)Google Scholar; Judson, Adoniram, Stevenson, Robert C. and Eveleth, Frederick Howard, Judson's Burmese–English dictionary as revised and enlarged by Robert C. Stevenson and F. H. Eveleth (Rangoon: Baptist Board of Publication, 1953)Google Scholar.

10 With regard to Upper Burma, the situation was different. The Judson's Burmese–English dictionary published in 1883 contained the term taung thu, which is used in Upper Burma and translated to ‘husbandman’ or ‘farmer’ in English. However, it assumed that the term thaun thu was not usually used. For example, in the local documents of the Konbaung period, in writing about money lending and land mortgage, usually called thet kayit, the name of a person engaged in agriculture was expressed as ‘(village name) ywa ne (the person's name)’ [the person who lives in this village]. (Pinnya ye tekkatho thamaing tana [University of Education, Department of History]), Konbaung khit leya thamaing thetkayit pa luhmu sipwasye thamaing, thutethana simankein, asiyin khansa, 1977–1978 [Economic history in a document on thet kayit from the Konbaung period, Report of research project, 1977–1978] (Yangon, publication year unknown).

11 The Burma land record manual, 4th edn (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, 1946), p. 187, para. 1349Google Scholar.

12 Report of the land and agriculture committee, part II (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, 1938), pp. 47–9Google Scholar. Brown argues that the real reason for the rejection of the bill was Burma's constitutional position as a province of India and its economic position as a supplier of rice for India proper; therefore, the Indian central government feared that the legislation of land prevented the development of the delta. Brown, A colonial economy in crisis, pp. 20–2.

13 Census of India, 1921, Volume X Burma, Part I Report, by S.G. Grantham, 1923, p. 239.

14 Nisbet, John, Burma under British rule and before, vol. I (London: Archibald Constable & Co Ltd, 1901), p. 280Google Scholar, cited in Cheng, Rice industry of Burma, pp. 159–60. This passage was also paraphrased by Furnivall as follows: ‘Much of the land registered as held by agriculturists was owned by wealthy men, residing at a distance from their land, whose only claim to be considered agriculturists was that they employed a bailiff to manage part of their estate. Again, much of the land registered to agriculturists was cultivated by men who were heavily indebted to money lenders.’ Furnivall, Political economy of Burma, pp. 61–2. When this passage is cited, only the latter part of this description by Furnivall is mentioned. See Adas, Burma delta, p. 73; and Brown, A colonial economy in crisis, p. 38.

15 Furnivall, Introduction to the political economy of Burma, pp. 42–5, 57–8, 61.

16 Furnivall, John Sydenham, Colonial policy and practice (New York: New York University Press, 1948), p. 87Google Scholar.

17 Furnivall, Introduction to political economy of Burma, pp. 106–7.

18 Wai, Tun, Economic development of Burma from 1800 till 1940 (Rangoon: Department of Economics, University of Rangoon, 1961), pp. 57/startpage, 60–1Google Scholar; Andrus, James Russell, Burmese economic life (Stanford University, CA: Stanford University Press, 1947), pp. 65–70Google Scholar; Tinker, Hugh, The union of Burma: A study of the first years of independence, 2nd edn (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 223–5Google Scholar.

19 Report of the land and agriculture committee, part II, pp. 41–2; Le ya myei nainganpain pyuloutye aso hnin simagein yi akyaung shinlin popya taw sadan [An explanation of the land nationalisation and its plan] (Yangon: pyitaungsu myanmar naingandaw asoya sa pounghneit tait, 1952), pp. 11–12Google Scholar. With regard to Furnivall's influence on the colonial administration and Burmese nationalism, see Pham, Julie, ‘Ghost hunting in colonial Burma: Nostalgia, paternalism and the thoughts of J.S. Furnivall’, South East Asia Research, 12, 2 (2004): 237–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Pham has also reassessed Furnivall's legacy by examining his biography and his influence on South East Asian historiography. See Pham, Julie, ‘J.S. Furnivall and Fabianism: Reinterpreting the “plural society” in Burma’, Modern Asian Studies, 39, 2 (2005): 321–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Furnivall, Introduction to political economy of Burma, p. 107. One acre is approximately 0.4 hectares.

21 For example, Brown, A colonial economy in crisis, ch. 1.

22 Adas, Burma delta, pp. 41, 69–72, 82, 143.

23 Ibid., pp. 127–8, 139–42, 200.

24 Scott, James C., The moral economy of the peasant: Rebellion and subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), pp. 13–15, 21Google Scholar; Wolf, Eric R., Peasant wars of the twentieth century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), pp. xxi–xxiiiGoogle Scholar. See also Elson, Robert, The end of the peasantry in Southeast Asia: Modern economic history of Southeast Asia (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997), pp. xix–xxCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Scott, Moral economy of the peasant, pp. 2–5, 57.

26 Ibid., pp. 68–76, 99–105.

27 For a general discussion, see Keyes, Charles, ‘Peasant strategies in Asian societies: Moral and rational economic approaches – A symposium’, Journal of Asian Studies, 42, 4 (1983): 753–868CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Adas, Michael, ‘“Moral economy” or “contest state”? Elite demands and the origins of peasant protest in Southeast Asia’, Journal of Social History, 13, 4 (1980): 526CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Adas, Michael, Prophets of rebellion: Millenarian protest movements against the European colonial order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

29 Brown, A colonial economy in crisis, p. 13. He also points out that the cultivator's market crop, namely rice, was the staple food. See Brown, , ‘“Blindness which we mistake for sight”: British officials and the economic world of the cultivator in colonial Burma’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 33, 2 (2005): 187CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Brown, A colonial economy in crisis, pp. 7, 13, 72–87. Based on this, it might be argued that in the realm of economic history, Brown is more of a follower of Scott than a critic because Brown attempts to determine the specific economic behaviour of the Burmese cultivators as opposed to their political behaviour, which is more Scott's interest. See Brown, ‘“Blindness which we mistake for sight”’, pp. 181, 185–7. However, with regard to the historical findings, Brown differs from Scott. Brown shows that only one in five paid the tax, as a result of which certain groups such as government officials, teachers, monks and people who were poor or had ‘no means of subsistence’ were exempted from capitation tax in the Pegu and Irrawaddy divisions in 1930–1931. See Brown, A colonial economy in crisis, pp. 105–6. Scott counters thus: ‘The remissions of the capitation taxes and the land revenue claims were not even remotely proportional to the percentage drop in the cultivator's income’. See Scott, James, ‘Book reviews’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 7, 1 (2007): 123Google Scholar.

31 Brown, A colonial economy in crisis, pp. 22, 36–9.

32 Elson, The end of the peasantry in Southeast Asia, pp. xix–xx. Elson insisted that such a peasant in Southeast Asia had disappeared in the early twentieth century. On the other hand, Mintz stated that it was not possible to define peasants; see Mintz, Sidney, ‘A note on the definition of peasantries’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 1, 1 (1973): 91–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Dirks, Nicholas B., Castes of mind, colonialism and the making of modern India (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 9, 123Google Scholar.

34 It is difficult to identify an individual within a broad area, because the Burmese people do not have a family name, and there are many people with the same name. Further, in this period, many of the names of people and places were written in Burmese, using a phonetic equivalent. Another reason to limit the fieldwork area is to ensure accessibility and conduct interviews with old villagers, thereby compensating for the lack of knowledge about the economic background in the historical records.

35 Gyi, U Tin, Report on the second revision settlement of Maubin district, 1925–1928 (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, 1929), pp. 60–2Google Scholar, 137; Revenue Department, Notification, no. 236, Dated Rangoon, 13 Dec. 1929, p. 4.

36 In the revenue manual, the revenue surveyor had to annually update the register of holdings. See Report of the committee appointed to examine the land revenue system of Burma, vol. I (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, 1922), p. 53Google Scholar. The registers for these years probably remained as is because 1894–1895 was the first year when both the present and previous years' land revenues were imposed based on the acre rate decided by the first original settlement. Also, two more registers were maintained every 10 years from 1894–95. With regard to the register from 1916–17, a re-survey and the division of the kwin was conducted in that year.

37 Another limitation was that it was possible that the person who was entered as a landholder in the register did not actually control the land or was not really a holder of the land. However, the landholders accepted it as a record of rights, and the colonial government used it as the fundamental fiscal and statistical record. See Report of the committee to examine the land revenue system of Burma, pp. 44–5, 171–4. Therefore, in this paper, I have assumed that the people entered as landholders in the register were in fact holders of the land.

38 Adas, Burma delta, p. 59.

39 Report on the settlement operations in Thongwa district, season 1890–1891 (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, 1893), pp. 11–12Google Scholar.

40 Ibid.

41 Report on the second revision settlement of Maubin district, 1925–1928 (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, 1928), pp. 14–15Google Scholar.

42 Report on the revision settlement operations in Maubin, Myaungmya and Pyapon districts, season 1905–1906 (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, 1907), pp. 1–2Google Scholar.

43 Report on the second revision settlement of Maubin district, 1925–1928, p. 2.

44 Ibid., pp. 176–7.

45 Ibid., pp. 9–10, 14.

46 Report on the settlement operations in Thongwa district, season 1890–1891, p. 14.

47 Kwin map no. 555, 556, Thongwa district, Maubin township, Yelegale circle.

48 The British government introduced the village tract system in Lower Burma in the 1890s. Prior to this, a ‘circle’ [tait], which comprised several villages and hamlets, was considered as an administrative unit. See Donnison, F.S.V., Public administration in Burma: A study of development during the British connection (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1953), pp. 23–4Google Scholar. With regard to the area around the G village tract, in the report on the settlement operation conducted in 1905–06, the term ‘circle’ had been used, but in the Gazetteer of Maubin district published in 1912, the term ‘village tract’ was used. See Report on the revision settlement operations, season 1905–1906, p. 33 (Appendices, statement A); Burma Gazetteer, Maubin district, volume B, no. 14 (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, 1912), p. 35Google Scholar.

49 Report on the settlement operations in Thongwa district, season 1890–1891, p. 5.

50 ‘Holding’ is a term used in the land revenue administration of Burma; it is the smallest unit of possession, comprising several fields. It is equivalent to the term ‘field’ in India. See Furnivall, Political economy of Burma, p. 208.

51 Akhundaw thit nanbat sayin [Register of holdings], Thongwa siyinsu [Thongwa district], Maubin myo [Maubin township], Yelegale tait [Yelegale circle], 1894–1895 khuhnit atwet [for the year 1894–1895], Paungyo Kwin, kwin no. 555, holding no. 112, 37, 48, 49, 122, 108; Ngagyi Gayet Kwin, kwin no. 556, holding no. 23, 24, 25, 26, 33.

52 No document pertaining to the grant of patta remains today, but the revenue administration report for 1894–95 does mention that demarcation and survey work was conducted around this area that year. See Report on the revenue administration of Burma for the year 1894–1895 (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, 1895), p. 21Google Scholar.

53 Kwin map no. 555 (Oaungyo kwin), no. 556 (Ngagyigayet kwin), Thongwa district, Maubin township, Yelegale circle.

54 Furnivall, Political economy of Burma, pp. 51–2. Other land-occupying systems included the squatter system, lease system, waste land grant system and the colony system. Of these, the squatter system was the most common manner in which people occupied land and was not really a formal system. Ibid., pp. 51–4.

55 The Lower Burma land revenue manual, corrected up to 15 June 1945 (Simla: Published under the authority of the Government of Burma, 1945), p. 3Google Scholar, section 6–8.

56 Furnivall, Political economy of Burma, pp. 51–2, 55–7.

57 Akhundaw thit nanbat sayin [Register of holdings I], 1894–1895, Maubin township, kwin no. 555, holding no. 35, 36, 37, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, kwin no. 556, holding no. 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 14, 16, 20, 21, 22, 27.

58 Report on the second revision settlement of Maubin district, 1925–1928, p. 62.

59 Report on the settlement operations in Thongwa district, season 1890–1891, pp. 22–3.

60 Akhundaw thit nanbat sayin [Register of holdings], 1894–1895, kwin no. 555, 556. According to the census conducted in 1891, the number of houses in the neighbouring village of Yelegale was 146, vis-à-vis the G village that had only 31 houses; see Census of India, Census of 1891, Imperial Series Volume IX, Burma Report, Imperial Table (Rangoon: [H.L. Eales] Government Printing and Stationery, 1892), p. 331Google Scholar.

61 Adas, Burma delta, pp. 61–2. With regard to the method of reclamation, we need to further study some new material. For example, a report on the revenue administration reported that taungya [shifting cultivation] cutters and Shans cleared the land to sell it to the Burmese. See Report on the revenue administration, 1880–1881, p. 53.

62 Report on the settlement operations in Thongwa district, season 1890–1891, p. 31.

63 Terms that correspond to the English term ‘non-agriculturist’ featuring in the register of holdings in 1893 were gwe kyei [money lender] and se tha [druggist?] other than koung the, but a later version of the register combined the terms corresponding to the term ‘non-agriculturist’ and collectively referred to them as koung the. Only chettyars were referred to by the abbreviation ‘C’.

64 Nanbat thit akhundaw sayin [Register of holdings I], 1903–1904, kwin no. 555, 556.

65 Contrary to this, there was one change in the category from koung the to le lout and land alienation from koung the to le lout. Hence these cases offset the increase of area held by the koung the, which was no more than 661.77 acres .

66 Cheng, Rice industry of Burma, p. 50.

67 Couper, Thomas, Report of inquiry into the condition of agricultural tenants and labourers (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, 1927), pp. 8–9Google Scholar. Couper stated that speculative trade started to flourish since 1910, but this phenomenon has often been reported as occurring as early as in the twentieth century in the ‘Season and crop report’. See Season and crop report for the year ending 30 June 1906 (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, 1907), p. 7Google Scholar; Season and crop report 1908, p. 5; Season and crop report 1909, p. 7.

68 Akhundaw thit nanbat sayin [Register of holdings I], 1894–1895, kwin no. 555, kwin no. 556; Nanbat thit akhundaw sayin [Register of holdings I], 1903–1904, kwin no. 555, 556. Many of the mortgagees were chettyars.

69 Sourced from the author's interview with old villagers from 3–7 Feb. 2005 in the G village tract. The current monk of the village monastery who was 70 years old at the time is the grandson of U Shwey Yu. According to him, U Shwey Yu's father knew how to work with elephants, and he cleared the area using these elephants. Furthermore, there was a creek and a pool near the village where the villagers said that there were tracks of the elephants and signs of them having bathed.

70 Nanbat thit akhundaw sayin [Register of holdings I], 1903–1904, kwin no. 555, 556, holding no. 91, 92, 12. U Naw Kyi was listed in a settlement report as the owner of more than 100 acres (Report on the revision settlement operations in Maubin, Myaungmya and Pyapon districts, season 1905–1906, statement S, p. 50). This is judged on the following grounds: The nominal name of U Shwey Yu's holding was Shwey Yu and his father Tha Dun Aung, and U Shwey Yu's holding was next to U Tha Dun Aung's holding. U Tha Dun Aung also jointly owned a holding with U Naw Kyi.

71 Hmatpoun saout thit 1 [Register of holdings], Myanma naingandaw aupain [Lower Burma], Maubin siinzu [Maubin district], Maubin myo [Maubin township], 1912–1913, kwin no. 555, 556; Hmatpoun saout thit 1 [Register of holdings], Maubin siinzu [Maubin district], Maubin myo [Maubin township], 1916–1917, kwin no. 754 (Ngagyigayet kwin), 758 (Yeozin kwin), 759 (Kalasu kwin), 760 (Paungyo East kwin).

72 Couper, Report of inquiry, p. 2.

73 Hmatpoun saout 1 [Register of holdings I], 1912–1913, kwin no. 555, 556; Hmatpoun saout 1 [Register of holdings I], 1916–1917, kwin no. 754, 758, 759, 760.

74 Nanbat thit akhundaw sayin [Register of holdings I], 1903–1904, kwin no. 555, holding no. 80, 83, 85, 72; Hmatpoun saout 1 [Register of holdings I], 1912–1913, kwin no. 555, holding no. 55, 59, 61, 69.

75 Akhundaw thit nanbat sayin [Register of holdings I], 1894–1895, kwinno. 555, holding no. 94, 95, 96; Nanbat thit akhundaw sayin [Register of holdings I], 1903–1904, kwin no. 555, holding no. 96, 97; Hmatpoun saout 1 [Register of holdings I], 1912–1913, kwin no. 555, holding no. 64, 81, 12, 28; Hmatpoun saout 1 [Register of holdings I], 1916–1917, kwin no. 759, holding no. 7, 16, kwin no. 760, holding no. 4, 10.

76 Burma, market section survey, no. 9, rice (Rangoon, Department of Agriculture), p. 91, Appendix XV.

77 Report on the revision settlement operations, season 1905–1906, p. 7. As per the law, towns were declared to be towns by the Governor's notification and were ruled by the Municipal Act or Towns Act. See The lower Burma town and village land act (Burma act IV, 1898) as amended up to 31 December 1944 (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, publication year unknown), p. 10, section 4.

78 To be precise, there were two sub-categories under non-agriculturist, namely residential non-agriculturist and non-residential non-agriculturist. The former was applied to the non-agriculturist who lived within the charge in which the land lied, and the latter was to the non-agriculturist who lived beyond it. See The Burma land record manual, p. 187, para. 1349.

79 Le ya myei yogyei ya yan shaut ta hmu [Application of compensation for land nationalisation], 227/la ka, 1955–1956.

80 Report on the second revision settlement of Maubin district, 1925–1928, p. 64. Scott cited this sentence as evidence of the deterioration of security in the rural area due to the growing hostility of the tenants towards the landlords, due to the fact that their right of subsistence was being ignored; Scott, Moral economy of the peasant, p. 76. However, this was not the sole cause. It was also attributed to the disintegration of the village community under the new village administration policy instituted by the British; Furnivall, Colonial policy, pp. 73–7, 138–41.

81 Department of Agriculture, Burma, market section survey, no. 9, rice, Appendix XV, p. 91.

82 Report on the second revision settlement of Maubin district, 1925–1928, p. 60, statement 6, pp. 184–5. Another cause for the hike in land price was that as a result of the growing scarcity of fertile waste, though to a less extent, there was growing competition among non-agriculturists who regarded the purchase of land as the best kind of investment.

83 Register deed, Maubin district, Maubin township, 1923, deed no. 151, 269. According to the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, all sales, exchanges and mortgages of property worth Rs 100 or more had to be registered. The register deed was prepared for this purpose. See The Burma land record manual, 4th edn (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, 1926)Google Scholar, para. 543. The purpose of purchase was unclear, but U San Myit also lent money to fellow villagers, as we know that landlords also engaged in such activity; Hmatpoun saout 1 [Register of holdings], 1916–1917, kwin no. 754, holding no. 18, kwin no. 758, holding no. 13. It might be possible that this purchase was a foreclosure of mortgaged land.

84 Report on the second revision settlement of Maubin district, 1925–1928, p. 60, statement 6, pp. 218–19.

85 Couper, Report of inquiry, p. 9.

86 Akhundaw thit nanbat sayin [Register of holdings], 1894–1895, kwin no. 556, holding no. 33; Nanbat thit akhundaw sayin [Register of holdings I], 1903–1904, kwin no. 556, holding no. 37; Hmatpoun saout 1 [Register of holdings], 1912–1913, kwin no. 556, holding no. 57; Hmatpoun saout 1 [Register of holdings], 1916–1917, kwin no. 754, holding no. 19; Register of holdings, from 1929 to 1952, kwin no. 754, holding no. 32. It is presumed that U San Myit's money-lending activity was also related to the inheritance of land.

87 Register of holdings, Maubin township, kwin no. 754, 758, 759, 760.

88 Binns, Bernard Ottwell, Agricultural economy in Burma (Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing and Stationery, 1948), p. 50Google Scholar.

89 Dirks, Castes of mind, p. 9.

90 The statistics began to be recorded in 1901 in accordance with the alteration of the report of revenue administration of Burma. Until then, the revenue administration reports had contained information about crops, land revenue, land ownership, etc., so the report was considerably long. The Government of India directed that it be divided into three different reports, namely, the season and crop report, land revenue administration report and land records report. See Report on the land revenue administration of Burma during the fifteen months ending on 30 June 1902 (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, 1902), p. 1Google Scholar. The British land administration in Myanmar was not concerned with the land tenure at the lowest level; therefore, before the late 1920s, the register of holdings had no official column to enter the description of the landowners.

91 Report on the land revenue administration of Burma, each year, annual statement XII.

92 Brown, A colonial economy in crisis, p. 22.

93 Couper, Report of inquiry, p. 29.

94 For example, Report of the land and agriculture committee, part II, pp. 37–9, and quotations at the beginning of this paper.

95 Furnivall, Political economy of Burma, pp. 65–70. Brown shares a similar view of the salient tenants in his book, A colonial economy in crisis, pp. 56–7.

96 Scott, Moral economy of the peasant, pp. 68–75.

97 Akhundaw thit nanbat sayin [Register of holdings], 1894–1895, Maubin township, kwin no. 555, 556; Nanbat thit akhundaw sayin [Register of holdings I], 1903–1904, kwin no. 555, 556; Hmatpoun saout 1 [Register of holdings], 1912–1913, kwin no. 555, 556; Hmatpoun saout 1 [Register of holdings], 1916–1917. The material does not tell us where these tenants went, but the settlement reports of Maubin district published in 1928 reported that they had frequently transferred from holding to holding either in the same kwin or kwins in the neighbourhood. In addition, it was also reported that there were undoubtedly many tenants who were able to secure the same holding every year with little capital of their own and a permanent home. See Report on the second revision settlement of Maubin district, 1925–1928, p. 68.

98 The register of holdings, for each year.

99 According to the Gazetteer, tenants were not rich enough to buy land; Burma Gazetteer, Maubin district, volume A (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, 1931), p. 52Google Scholar.

100 With regard to the tenants who rented more than 80 acres in 1912–13, it was possible that a tenant with such a large area of rented land was a koza. According to interviews conducted by the author, the word koza was used to refer to a tenant who had borrowed a large area of land from a landlord and had sublet it to other tenants or, in other words, a koza was like a bailiff who collected rent in place of the landowner, who lived in a distant place and delivered the land revenue to the headman of the village tract in which the land was located. See Le ya myei yogyei ya yan shaut ta hmu [Application of compensation for land nationalisation], 227/la ka, 1955–1956, p. 10.

101 Report on the second revision settlement of Maubin district, 1925–1928, p. 41.

102 Nanbat thit akhundaw sayin [Register of holdings], 1894–1895, kwin no. 555, 556.

103 Akhundaw thit nanbat sayin [Register of holdings 1], 1894–1895, kwin no. 555, 556; Nanbat thit akhundaw sayin [Register of holdings 1], 1903–1904, kwin no. 555, 556; Hmatpoun sayin saout 1 [Register I], 1916–1917, kwin no. 754, 759, 760.

104 Furnivall, Introduction to the political economy of Burma, p. 208.

105 In fact, such cases increased in the 1930s; Statistical register of tenants, register I-A, kwin no. 758, Maubin township, Maubin district, 1933–34, 1934–35.

106 See Furnivall, Political economy of Burma, pp. 67–8; Brown, A colonial economy in crisis, p. 23; Couper, Report of inquiry, p. 2; Report on the second revision settlement of Maubin district, 1925–1928, p. 62.

107 Report on the second revision settlement of Maubin district, 1925–1928, Report statement 5, pp. 180–1.

108 Ibid., p. 66.

109 Ibid., p. 67.

110 Feeny, David, ‘The moral or the rational peasant? Competing hypotheses of collective action’, Journal of Asian Studies, 42, 4 (1983): 774CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

111 Report on the second revision settlement of Maubin district, 1925–1928, p. 43.

112 Scott, Moral economy of the peasant, p. 68; Couper, Report of inquiry, pp. 12, 32, 38.

113 Dirks, Castes of mind, pp. 9, 274, 305–6.

114 In regard to the postcolonial policy by the Burmese nationalists, see Thaunghmaung, Ardeth Maung, Behind the teak curtain: Authoritarianism, agricultural policies and political legitimacy in rural Burma/Myanmar (London: Kegan Paul, 2004), pp. 57–66Google Scholar.