ABSTRACT
On the night of 22 December 1930, rebel forces attacked villages in the south-west of Tharrawaddy District, seizing guns and, in two villages, killing the headman.1 The following day the rising spread to Insein District to the south. Again villages were raided, headmen killed, and guns seized. But there was also an attack on a railway station, in which the stationmaster was beaten and the telegraph destroyed, and one Indian and two Chinese traders were killed. These opening days also saw an attack on a military police post, assaults on police stations, the killing of several isolated British officials, and, on the night of 30 December, an attempt to dynamite a railway bridge. The colonial administration was caught by surprise by the rising, which may explain part of the rebels’ success in these early clashes. But on 31 December 1930, a battalion of the Burma Rifles, consisting of Kachins, Chins, and Karens, attacked the rebel headquarters deep in Tharrawaddy. The rebels fled and the headquarters – a
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British rule in Burma since the late nineteenth century, indeed one of the most important rural risings of the colonial period in South East Asia. In the coming months the rebellion would engulf large parts of the delta, and at one point would reach into the Shan States in the northeast. It would take some 18 months and the deployment of two imported divisions to break the final resistance. According to an official count, the number killed was 1,688, including 1,332 rebels. One thousand three hundred and eightynine rebels were brought before the courts, convicted, and sentenced to prison: a further 126 went to the gallows.2
