ABSTRACT
Since the mid-eighteenth century, the only real political autonomy enjoyed by the Mon has been of a very limited, insecure and circumscribed kind, won on the battlefields of southeast Burma. By the eve of Britain's annexation of Burma, the Mon had already become a subject people. Their ancient culture and language persisted, but the era of Mon political dominion was at an end. Although the advent of British rule in Burma was to remove the immediate fact of Burman domination, this was replaced by another, in many ways more insidious regime.
