ABSTRACT
One of the greatest advances in our understanding of the meaning of the era of European imperialist dominance for the peoples of Africa and Asia has resulted from recent studies which have forced a blurring of the distinction between the precolonial and colonial periods. The historiography of the area that presently makes up the nation of Burma provides a striking illustration of the distortions that result from placing too much emphasis on discontinuity and differences between phases of anticolonial resistance and protest. The basic forms of Burmese protest and resistance to British rule that had emerged in the days of conquest—local risings led by pongyis, prophets, or pretenders, and banditrypersisted into the 1930s, and in some areas into the period of independence. Although some pongyis or Buddhist monks had joined in the resistance after the 1852 annexation of Lower Burma, in the late 1880s for the first time they assumed a major role in the struggle against the British.
