Thibaw Min

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King Thibaw Min of Upper Burma circa 1880

Thibaw Min (Burmese: သီပော္‌မင္‌း; 1858 - December 19, 1916; or simply Thibaw, Theebaw, or Theobaw (referred to as Thibau by George Orwell in Burmese Days) was the last king of Burma (now Myanmar). His reign ended when Burma was defeated by the forces of the British Empire in 1885, prior to its annexation in 1886.

Thibaw was born in Mandalay and studied briefly in a Buddhist monastery. His father Mindon Min made him prince of the northern State of Thibaw (now Hsipaw), from which he took his name, and he succeeded as king in 1878 with the help of a powerful widow of his late father and other senior officials. He was married to two of his half sisters the younger of which was known to have a substantial influence on him.

At the time of his accession half of Burma had been under British occupation for thirty years. Understandably this was resented and it was no secret that the king intended to regain this territory. Relations fouled when during the early 1880's the king began making moves to move his country closer to the French. Relations deteriorated still further around 1885 in an incident called the "Great Shoe Question" where the royal court insisted that visiting British dignitories remove their shoes before entering the palace. The British officials refused and were banished from the northern capital. Finally, in 1885 Thibaw issued a proclamation calling on all his countrymen to liberate Lower Burma from the British.

The British, using the pretext that he was a tyrant who had reneged on his treaties, decided to complete the conquest that had started in 1824. General Prendergast, with 11,000 men, a fleet of flat-bottomed boats, and elephant batteries, received orders to invade Upper Burma.

“	They reached the royal city with little opposition. The king and his queen had retired to a summer house in the palace gardens to await the British, with whom they intended to make peace. To distract their minds, the maidens of the Burmese court were dancing, while near at hand stood the royal elephants, laden with treasure and ready for flight. To the royal palace marched the British, to demand the surrender of the Burmese king and his kingdom within twenty-four hours. The blow had fallen at last. It was too late to think of escape. Early next morning King Thebaw was hurried into a bullock-cart with little ceremony, his queen into another, and in the presence of a great crowd of weeping and awestruck subjects, they were conveyed to a steamer on the Irawadi. Here a guard of British soldiers was drawn up: they presented arms on the appearance of the royal prisoners. As their bayonets flashed in the sunlight, the king fell on his knees in abject terror. "They will kill me," he cried wildly. "Save my life." His queen was braver. She strode on erect—her little child clinging to her dress—fierce and dauntless to the last. So the king and queen of Burma were exiled.	„
—The Baldwin Project: The Annexation of Burma

Though the partiality or accuracy of the story related above cannot now be proved, Thibaw, his wife and two infant daughters were exiled to Ratnagiri, India, where they lived the rest of their lives in a dilapidated house in virtual isolation.

[edit] Exile and the fate of the Royal Family

Thibaw had eight children of whom six were born in Burma and two were born in exile in India. His first four children (two sons and two daughters) perished from small pox at the Royal Palace when very young. His eldest surviving child Princess Myat Phaya (Mibura) Gyi was born in 1882 followed by her younger sister Myat Paya Lat born in 1884. Following the arrest of the royal family in 1885 they and a few retainers were first sent to Ceylon and then Madras on what was certainly an extremely stressful journey for the young family. At Madras in March 1886 the pregnant Queen Suhpayu Lat gave birth to their third surviving daughter, Princess Myat Phaya. In early 1887 the family arrived at their place of exile in Ratnagiri close to Bombay and the birth of the fourth daughter Princess Mayat Phaya Galay followed in April that year.

Life was certainly not easy for the family in Ratnagiri. By all accounts their money soon ran out and they were forced to live off a meagre pension. The eldest daughter Phaya fell in love with one of the servants; the gatekeeper Shrimant Gopal Bhaurao Savant; by whom she had a child out of wedlock in 1906. The king died of a heart attack at the age of 58 in 1916 and was buried in a mausoleum on the estate. His wife the Queen would follow him to the grave within a year. Though the British portrayed King Thibaw as tyrant, he was known to be a religious and polite person and had tried to save his country as best he could.

The fate of the chilren was a chequered one. The eldest daughter eventually married her fathers former servant after the death of her mother in 1917 and by him she had a further two children. She and her three sisters returned to Rangoon in 1947 following the independence of India. However she was unwelcome because of her marriage to a commoner and an Indian Hindu at that and was compelled to return to the only home she knew in Ratnagiri. Tragically she died shortly after she returned.

“	The collector's records say that when Phaya died, she was such a destitute that the locals of the village around collected money under the leadership of the collectorate for her funeral. Phaya left behind the daughter she had home to Gopal, who had died earlier. This daughter, named Tu Tu, was brought up in poverty and not being educated, forgot all about her royal heritage except having one sorry looking poster painting of her mother in her home for veneration among the many household gods...Without money or education, Tu Tu married a local mechanic and had at least six or seven children, all of whom became more and more Indian in religion and culture as well as appearance. Tu Tu, for whom Burmese is a forgotten language, still lives in Ratnagiri as an old woman and speaks fluent Marathi with a rural Maharashtrian accent. She used to sell paper flowers to make a little money for her family in the days gone by.	„
—The Hindustan Times, 16 September 1995

The fate of the three other daughters of Thibaw was not so sad. Myat Paya Lat married her fathers former private secretary Thakin Kin Maung Lat. It is believed she died in exile in Kalimpong, India, in 1956. The second-eldest daughter, Mayat Paya Lat, married Kadow Gyi - a Burmese prince - in 1922 and with him returned to Rangoon in 1947. They remained there for the rest of their lives having one daughter of whom there appears no record. Mayat Paya Lat died in 1962. The youngest daughter of Thibaw, Mayat Phaya Galay, married a former monk in 1921. She had four sons and two daughters. They and their children represent the extant members of the Burmese royal family and most of them continue to live in Burma. Mayat Phaya Galay's eldest son Taw Phaya Gyi was murdered in 1948 by communists. Another of her sons Taw Phaya Lay was patron of the Ma-Ma-Ta Patriotic Front. He was placed under house arrest during much of the 1970's and 1980's dying in Rangoon in 2006. The other sons and grandsons of Mayat Phaya Galay, the youngest daughter of King Thibaw, continue to live in Burma to this day. The head of the Konbaung dynasty is Prince Taw Phaya (b.1924) who would be succeeded by his eldest son Prince Taw Phaya Myat Gyi (b.1945).