Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T19:28:41.825Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Shifting the Cultivator: The Politics of Teak Regeneration in Colonial Burma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Raymond L. Bryant
Raymond L. Bryant
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies University of London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

One of the most innovative aspects of forest policy in colonial Burma was the employment of shifting cultivators in order to create teak plantations. As developed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this system of plantation forestry represented an far-sighted attempt to establish teak production on a long-term basis. Indeed, its adaptation of what many colonial officials viewed as a destructive and primitive form of agriculture to more ‘useful’ end, guaranteed its popularity in a broader imperial context. Even today, the use of shifting cultivators for commercial tree planting remains an acknowledged agroforestry technique, and is promoted as a cure for various social and ecological problems.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , May 1994 , pp. 225 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

I wish to thank Professor R. H. Taylor and Dr S. J. Squire for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper, as well as C. Lawrence for drawing the map. The support of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals of the Universities of the United Kingdom and the School of Oriental and African Studies is also much appreciated.Google Scholar

1 For example, see Lowe, R. G., ‘Development of Taungya in Nigeria’, in Agroforestry: Realities, Possibilities and Potentials, Gholz, Henry L., ed. (Dordrecht, 1987), 152–3Google Scholar; Brookfield, Harold, ‘The New Great Age of Clearance and Beyond’, in People of the Tropical Rain Forest, Denslow, Julie S. and Padoch, Christine, eds (London, 1988), 223–4.Google Scholar For a critical perspective on this technique, see Peluso, Nancy Lee, ‘Rich Forests, Poor People, and Development: Forest Access Control and Resistance in Java’ (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1988), 14–17.Google Scholar

2 See Blanford, H. R., ‘Regeneration with the Assistance of Taungya in Burma’, Indian Forest Records 11, 3 (1925): 81–121Google Scholar; King, K. F. S., Agri-Silviculture (The Taungya System) (Ibadan, 1968)Google Scholar; Lamprecht, Hans, Silviculture in the Tropics: Tropical Forest Ecosystems and Their Tree Species; Possibilities and Methods for Their Long-term Utilization, trans. Brose, John, Conn, Stephen, Woods-Schank, Gregory G. (Eschborn, 1989), 138–41Google Scholar; Evans, Julian, Plantation Forestry in the Tropics (Oxford, 1982), 349–51.Google Scholar Although the development of taungya forestry is popularly associated with colonial Burma, comparable systems emerged at an earlier date elsewhere, see Menzies, Nicholas, ‘Three Hundred Years of Taungya: A Sustainable System of Forestry in South China’, Human Ecology 16 (12 1988): 361–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Nisbet, J., Burma under British Rule and Before, vol. 2 (London, 1901), 58Google Scholar; Stebbing, E. P., The Forests of India, vol. 2 (London, 1923), 568.Google Scholar

4 Details on laissez-faire Forestry in early colonial Burma can be found in Baillie, W. R., ‘Summary of Papers Relating to the Tenasserim Forests’, Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government IX (1852)Google Scholar; see also Stebbing, E. P., The Forests of India, vol.1 (London, 1922), chs 8 and 9.Google Scholar

5 Furnivall, J. S., Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India (Cambridge, 1948; repr., New York, 1956), 45Google Scholar; Pollack, Oliver B., Empires in Collision: Anglo-Burmese Relations in the Mid-Nineteenth Centuy (Wesport, 1979), 46.Google Scholar

6 Falconer, H., ‘Report on the Teak Forests of the Tenasserim Provinces’, Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government IX (1852), 36–7.Google Scholar

7 DrHelfer, J. W. cited in Baillie, ‘Summary of Papers’, 90Google Scholar; see also Helfer, John William, ‘Third Report on Tenasserim’, Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society 8, no. 96 (12 1839): 985.Google Scholar

8 Assistant to the Superintendent of Forests, Mr Maling, cited in Baillie, ‘Summary of Papers’, 131.Google Scholar

9 Cited in ibid., 127–8.

10 Submitted to government in January 1851, it was published along with other papers relating to the Tenasserim forests in Selections from the Records of the Bengal Government IX (1852).Google Scholar

11 Grove, Richard, ‘Threatened Islands, Threatened Earth: Early Professional Science and the Historical Origins of Global Environmental Concerns’, in Sustaining Earth: Response to the Environmental Threats, Angell, David J. R., Comer, Justyn D. and Wilkinson, Matthew L. N., eds (London, 1990), 15–16, 23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Adas, Michael, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (London, 1989), 225.Google Scholar

13 Stebbing, , Tht Forests of India, vol. 1, 256–60.Google Scholar On the appointment of Brandis and his work in Burma, see ibid., 367–91; Hesmer, Herbert, ‘Dietrich Brandis and Forestry in Burma’, trans. von Bendemann, E. and von Bendemann, D., Guardian (Rangoon) 25, no. 4 (04 1978): 33–40.Google Scholar

14 Brandis, D., Report on the Teak Forests of Pegu with a Memorandum on the Teak in the Tharawaddy Forests (London, 1860), 33.Google Scholar Although the original idea of taungya forestry in Burma is typically attributed to Brandis, the first to carry out the plan was a Burmese forester named U San Dun, see Ribbentrop, B., Forestry in British India (Calcutta, 1900), 192Google Scholar; Brandis, Dietrich, ‘The Burma Teak Forests’, repr. from Garden and Forest IX [1895], 25.Google Scholar

15 The Karen were the principal source of labour for taungya forestry. For our purposes, no distinction is made between the various sub-groups of the Karen. On the complexities of Karen ethnicity, see Keyes, Charles F. (ed), Ethnic Adaptation and Identity: The Karen on the Thai Frontier with Burma (Philadelphia, 1979).Google Scholar

16 McClelland, J., ‘Report on the Southern Forests of Pegu’, Selections from the Records of the Government of India (Foreign Department) IX (1855), 13.Google Scholar

17 Seaton, W. cited in Progress Report of Forest Administration in British Burma (published annually; hereafter RFA), 1863–1864, 9.Google Scholar

18 Ibid.

19 Marshall, Harry I., The Karen People of Burma: A Study in Anthropology and Ethnology (Columbus, 1922), 63–4, 76–8, 115–26Google Scholar; Idem, ‘Karen Bronze Drums’, Journal of the Burma Research Society XIX (1929): 1–14Google Scholar; Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie, The Loyal Karens of Burma (London, 1887), 88Google Scholar; Falla, Jonathan, True Love and Bartholomew: Rebels on the Burmese Border (Cambridge, 1991), 4–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nisbet, , Burma under British Rule, vol. 1, 323–4.Google Scholar

20 Brandis, , Teak Forests of Pegu, 40.Google Scholar

21 Cady, John F., A History of Modern Burma (Ithaca, 1958), 31, 42–3.Google Scholar

22 These taxes were approximately 6 rupees per individual per year, see Conservator Seaton to Chief Commissioner, 27 September 1869, RFA for 1869–1870.Google Scholar In early colonial Tenasserim, Karen paid as much as 20 rupees per person, see Furnivall, J. S., ‘The Fashioning of Leviathan’, Journal of the Burma Research Society XXIX (1939):119–20.Google Scholar

23 See Rules for Preserving the Forests in Pegu (1856), nos 11, 20, repr. in Brandis, Teak Forests of Pegu, 42–4Google Scholar; British Burma Forest Rules (1865), nos 9, 10, 35, repr. in Brandis, D., Memorandum on the Forest Legislation proposed for British India other than the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay (Simla, 1875), 53–7.Google Scholar

24 Brandis, D., Suggestions regarding Forest Administration in British Burma (Calcutta,1876), 11. During the 1840s, colonial officials in Tenasserim briefly considered conferring rights in timber to the hill Karen, but the idea was vetoed by the Court of Directors of the East India Company, see Baillie, ‘Summary of Papers’, 132–3, 135, 165, 171–2.Google Scholar

25 Adas, Michael, ‘From Avoidance to Confrontation: Peasant Protest in Precolonial and Colonial Southeast Asia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 23 (04 1981): 217–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Adas, Michael, ‘From Footdragging to Flight: The Evasive History of Peasant Avoidance Protest in South and South-east Asia’, Journal of Peasant Studies 13 (01 1986): 69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 RFA for 1866–1867, 24. Cultivators also refused to cooperate with forest officials deputed to investigate cases of teak destruction, see RFA for 1869–1870, 7.Google Scholar

28 RFA for 1863–1864, 2Google Scholar; RFA for 1867–1868, 27Google Scholar; RFA for 1868–1869, 15.Google Scholar

29 See the memoranda by Seaton, W. in Government of India, Copy of Enclosures of Forests Despatch from the Government of India no. 14 (Calcutta, 1874).Google Scholar

30 Heske, Franz, German Forestry (New Haven, 1938), 20–36, 250–5.Google Scholar On sustained-yield forestry in preindustrial Japan, see Totman, Conrad, The Green Archipelago: Forestry in Preindustrial Japan (London, 1989).Google Scholar

31 Atkinson, D. J., ‘Forests and Forestry in Burma’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts XCVI (1948): 483–4.Google Scholar

32 Nisbet, , Burma under British Rule, vol. 2, 51Google Scholar; Rodger, Alex, A Handbook of the Forest Products of Burma (Rangoon, 1951), 16.Google Scholar

33 Ribbentrop, , Forestry in British India, 194.Google Scholar

34 Ironically, the push to create reserved forests stemmed largely from the perception that shifting cultivation was destroying the teak forests, see RFA for 1869–1870, 6Google Scholar; Stebbing, E. P., The Forests of India, vol. 3 (London, 1926), 55.Google Scholar

35 Resolution by the Chief Commissioner, RFA for 1874–1875, 4.Google Scholar

36 Ribbentrop, , Forestry in British India, 194.Google Scholar

37 RFA (Pegu) for 1885–1886, 6Google Scholar; RFA (Pegu) for 1886–1887, 7–8Google Scholar; Cady, , History of Modern Burma, 137–8.Google Scholar

38 Taylor, Robert H., The State in Burma (London, 1987), 68.Google Scholar

39 ibid., 116–17, 156–7; Cady, , History of Modern Burma, 89–90, 94Google Scholar; Mills, J. A.,‘Burmese Peasant Response to British Provincial Rule 1852–1885’, in Peasants and Politics: Grass Roots Reaction to Change in Asia, Miller, D. B. ed. (London, 1979), 77–104.Google Scholar

40 Langham-Carter, R. R., ‘Burmese Rule on the Toungoo Frontier’, Journal of the Burma Research Society XXVII (1937): 15–32Google Scholar; Fytche, Albert, ‘Narrative of the Mission to Mandalay in 1867’, Selections from the Records of the Government of India (Foreign Department) LXIII (1868), 21–2Google Scholar; Cady, , History of Modern Burma, 93.Google Scholar

41 RFA for 1866–1867, 24.Google Scholar

42 RFA for 1867–1868, 28.Google Scholar

43 The ethnic implications of colonialism in Burma are discussed in Taylor, Robert H., ‘Perceptions of Ethnicity in the Politics of Burma’, Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 10 (1982): 7–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Idem, The State in Burma, 100–2; Cady, , History of Modern Burma, 140–1, 317.Google Scholar

44 RFA (Tenasserim) for 1882–1883, 4–5; RFA (Tenasserim) for 1884–1885, 4.Google Scholar

45 Ribbentrop, , Forestry in British India, 193.Google Scholar

46 For example, see Brandis, , Teak Forests of Pegu, 31–4Google Scholar; Baden-Powell, B. H., The Forest System of British Burma (Calcutta, 1873), 11Google Scholar; Nisbet, , Burma under British Rule, vol. 2, 60Google Scholar; Stebbing, , The Forests of India, vol. 2, 376Google Scholar; Watson, H. W. A., ‘Taungya Cutting’, Indian Forester XXXIV (1908): 265Google Scholar; Atkinson, , ‘Forests and Forestry in Burma’, 487–8.Google Scholar

47 RFA for 1870–1871, 5Google Scholar; RFA for 1874–1875, 17Google Scholar; Nisbet, , Burma under British Rule, vol. 2, 60, 63–4.Google Scholar In contrast, little thought was given to the ecological consequences of the state-sanctioned deforestation of much of the Irrawaddy delta in the late nineteenth century, see Adas, Michael, ‘Colonization, Commercial Agriculture, and the Destruction of the Deltaic Rainforests of British Burma in the Late Nineteenth Century’, in Global Deforestation and the Nineteenth-Century World Economy, Tucker, Richard P. and Richards, J. F., eds (Durham, 1983), 95–110.Google Scholar

48 RFA (Lower Burma) for 1892–1893, lxi.Google Scholar

49 Baden-Powell, , Forest System, 12.Google Scholar

50 Ribbentrop, , Forestry in British India, 194–5Google Scholar; Nisbet, , Burma under British Rule, vol. 2, 83–4.Google Scholar

51 RFA for 1905–1906, 6Google Scholar; Walker, H. C., ‘Reproduction of Teak in Bamboo Forests in Lower Burma’, Indian Forester XXX (1904): 51.Google Scholar

52 RFA for 1904–1905, 11.Google Scholar Cultivators also picked flat, swampy ground that was often better suited for their crops than for teak trees, see Clifford, J. D., ‘The Formation of Teak Taungya Plantations in Burma’, Indian Forester XLIII (1917): 121.Google Scholar

53 See Evans, , Plantation Forestry, 413–16.Google Scholar

54 RFA (Tenasserim) for 1895–1896, 8Google Scholar; see also Walker, , ‘Reproduction of Teak’, 51.Google Scholar

55 This controversy generated a large and technical literature centred on whether the incidence of rainfall or the concentration of teak in plantations was ultimately to blame for the damage. See Scott, C. W., Measurements of the Damage to Teak Timber by the Beehole Borer Moth, Burma Forest Bulletin no. 29 (Rangoon, 1932)Google Scholar; Champion, H. G., The Problem of the Pure Teak Plantation, Forest Bulletin no. 78 (Calcutta, 1932)Google Scholar; Laurie, M. V. and Griffith, A. L., ‘The Problem of the Pure Teak Plantation’, Indian Forest Records (n.s.: Silviculture) 5 (1942.): 1–121Google Scholar; Sein, U Kyaw, ‘The Bee-Hole Borer of Teak’, Burmese Forester XIII, 2 (12 1963): 32–9.Google Scholar

56 Blanford, H. R., ‘Teak Regeneration under the Uniform System in Mohnyin’, Indian Forester XLIII (08 1917): 361Google Scholar; Idem, ‘Regeneration with the Assistance of Taungya’, 83; Stebbing, , The Forests of India, vol. 3, 415–18, 450–2.Google Scholar

57 The government's order is reprinted in RFA for 1939–1940, 20Google Scholar; see also, RFA for 1934–1935, 19Google Scholar; RFA for 1935–1936, 20.Google ScholarBurma's acting chief forester, A. W. Moodie, claimed that a majority of forest officials agreed with this decision, RFA for 1936–1937, 17Google Scholar; for an alternative view, see Atkinson, D. J., ‘The Financial Possibilities of Plantations’, Indian Forester LXIII (12 1937): 807–13.Google Scholar

58 Taylor, , The State in Burma, ch. 2.Google Scholar

59 Watson, , ‘Taungya Cutting’, 264–9. The number of taungya cutters in the Pegu Yoma reserves was estimated to be 1,054 in 1922, down from 1,757 at the time these areas were originally settled,Google Scholar see Watson, H. W. A., A Note on the Pegu Yoma Forests (Rangoon, 1923), app. IV.Google Scholar

60 Government of Burma, Village Manual (Rangoon, 1940), 119–25Google Scholar; see also Davis, A. P., ‘Forest Villages in Burma’, Indian Forester XLIX (1923): 641–5.Google Scholar

61 For an analysis of the European teak firms in late colonial Burma, see Diokno, Maria Serena I., ‘British Firms and the Economy of Burma, with Special Reference to the Rice and Teak Industries, 1917–1937’ (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1983), chs 5 and 6.Google Scholar

62 Nisbet, J., ‘Notes on Improvement Fellings for the Benefit of Teak in Fire-protected Reserved Forests, Burma’, Indian Forester XXV (1899): 202–14.Google Scholar

63 Even forest officials recognized that policy changes on taungya forestry had been ‘grossly unfair’ to many cultivators, see Watson, H. W. A., ‘Forestry in Lower Burma’, Indian Forester XLIV (05 1918): 215.Google Scholar Following the Second World War, Karen also felt betrayed when they were not granted independence by the British. On this fateful decision and its consequences, see Smith, Martin, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity (London, 1991), 50–2, 72–87passim, 110–2, 137–54 passim.Google Scholar

64 Of 1,838 cases reported in 1893–1894, no less than 1,451 were in these districts, and many concerned the felling of sha trees in taungyas,Google Scholar see Resolution, of the Chief Commissioner, RFA for 1893–1894, 2.Google Scholar

65 Letter to Chief Commissioner, 29 October 1890, RFA (Lower Burma) for 1889–1890.Google Scholar

66 Union of Myanmar [Burma], Forestry Situation in Myanmar (Yangone [Rangoon]: 1989), 6Google Scholar; Blower, John and Paine, James with Hahn, U Saw, Ohn, U, and Sutter, Harold, ‘Burma (Myanmar)’ in The Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests: Asia and the Pacific, Collins, N. Mark, Sayer, Jeffrey A., Whitmore, Timothy C., eds (London, 1991), 108.Google Scholar

67 In precolonial Burma, state control was more limited in hill areas, in part owing to the fact that ‘these areas had only a small economic surplus for expropriation by the state because of their meagre populations and difficult agricultural conditions’, Taylor, The State in Burma, 37.Google Scholar

68 Hall, D. G. E., A History of South-east Asia, 4th edn. (London, 1981), 13, 152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar