ABSTRACT
Anglo-French rivalry continued in Yunnan along Burma’s northern frontiers until well into the present century. Rival railway and mining claims were the most frequent causes of friction. Historically, French interest in the lands east of Suez began with the organization of the French East India Company, in 1604, the dispatch of the first French ships to the Orient, in 1611, and the beginnings of the French Oriental establishments, in the middle of the century. British officials in Burma frequently complained of the impossibility of getting the government of India to give any attention to the northeastern frontier. J. Dupuis was perhaps willing to show extensive Burmese territory in the hope that France would inherit King Mindon’s holdings; but the map was later to plague the French, who, after the British annexation of Burma, in 1886, found it to their advantage to maintain that Burma had at no time extended even to the Mekong.
