CHAPTER XIX
CHIEF TOWNS
Lower Burma
Rangoon. Rangoon is still the capital of Burma and the headquarters of the Local Government. Although it is only since the British conquest of Pegu that the city has risen to great importance, it was long a place of some note[1]. The dawn of its history is in the year 585 B.C., when the first Shwe Dagon Pagoda was built, and round it sprang up a village or small town. It was not till 1755 A.D. that it acquired its present name. In that year Alaungpaya laid out a new town on the river bank and called it Yan-gôn, the end of strife. Not long after, the East India Company established a factory and 1796 saw the appointment of a British Resident or Agent. At the time of Captain Symes' visit in 1794, Rangoon was a busy trading port, with some twenty-five to thirty thousand inhabitants, extending for about a mile along the river and about a third of a mile in depth. Inland, the square city (myo), characteristic of Burmese royal towns, was enclosed by a wooden stockade. The houses were raised from the ground on posts, some of bamboo, some of wood. Pigs roamed the streets and acted as scavengers. The description is strangely familiar to those who saw Mandalay in 1885. Later on, the town languished, probably on account of Burmese misrule, and in 1826 its population had dwindled to about 8000. It was a miserable place in a dismal swamp. After the First Burmese War, it began to revive. In 1841, King Tharrawaddy built a new stockaded city near the great Pagoda, and part of the
- ↑ For an admirable and interesting account of "Old Rangoon," by Prof. W. G. Fraser, see Journal of the Burma Research Society, x. ii.
