Mawlamyine

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Mawlamyine

Mawlamyine
Burmese:	ေမာ္‌လမ္ရုိင္‌မ္ရုိ့
- IPA	[mɔ`la̰mjàin mjo̰]
- MLCTS	mau la. mruing mrui.
Admin. division:	Mon State
Area:	km²
Population:	300,000
Coordinates:	16°29'4.66"N, 97°37'33.43"E
Mayor:
Demographics
Ethnicities:	Bamar, Burmese Chinese, Burmese Indians, Kayin, Mon
Religions:	Buddhism, Christianity, Islam

Mawlamyine (Burmese: ေမာ္‌လမ္ရုိင္‌မ္ရုိ့; MLCTS: mau la. mruing mrui.; formerly Moulmein) is the capital and largest city in Mon State, Myanmar. The city sits on the coast of Taninthayi. It is the third-largest city in Myanmar, with a population of 300,000. The population is estimated as 75% ethnic Mon, with minorities of Bamar, Anglo-Burmese, Karen, Indian and Chinese. During colonial times, Moulmein had a substantial Anglo-Burmese population; an area of the city was known as 'Little England' due to the large Anglo-Burmese community, many of them engaged in the running of rubber plantations; however nowadays this has dwindled to all but a handful of families as most have left for the UK or Australia.

Mawlamyine became the first capital of British Burma between 1827 and 1852 after Taninthayi (formerly Tenasserim) and Rakhine (formerly Arakan) were ceded to Britain under the Treaty of Yandabo at the end of the First Anglo-Burmese War, primarily because it was a major port for the extraction of teak. Today, Mawlamyine is famous for its tropical fruits and for its cuisine as indicated in the popular Burmese expression,"Mandalay for the speaking, Yangon for the bragging and Mawlamyine for the eating".

It is probably best known to English speakers through the opening lines of Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Road to Mandalay":

"By the old Moulmein pagoda

Lookin' Eastward to the sea

There's a Burma girl a-settin'

and I know she thinks o' me".

Mawlamyine (referred to as "Moulmein") is also the setting of George Orwell's famous 1936 short story Shooting an Elephant.