In 1880, an organized Shan movement against Burmese rule emerged, which still persists today. (Note that at this time, England only controlled Lower Burma. Upper Burma and Mandalay were still ruled by the Burmese king.) In that year, the sawbwas of the states of Mongnai, Lawksawk, Mongpawn, and Mongnawng refused to appear before the Burmese king Thibaw in an annual act of New Year’s obeisance. A column sent by Thibaw failed to capture the upstart sawbwas. Then, in 1882, this defiance became violent. In that year, the sawbwa of Kengtung attacked and killed the Burmese resident in Kengtung. Inspired by the boldness of the Kengtung sawbwa, the sawbwa of Mongnai and his allies broke into open revolt. In November 1883, they attacked the Burmese garrison at Mongnai, killing four hundred. But their success was short-lived. The Burmese counterattacked, forcing the rebellious Shan chiefs to flee to Kengtung, across the Salween River, whose steep defiles and dense jungles gave them shelter against further incursions.
Although the rebellion was directed against the Burmese government, the goal of the resistance was not Shan independence, a fact of history that is frequently misunderstood. Indeed, the Shan sawbwas recognized that without a strong central power, the Shan States would always be plagued by war. Their chief goal was the overthrow of Thibaw, and the crowning of a suzerain who would repeal the thathameda tax, a land tax they deemed unjust. Thus, as their candidate they selected a Burman known as the Limbin Prince, a disenfranchised member of the house of Alaungpaya, the ruling dynasty. This rebellion became known as the Limbin Confederacy. In December 1885, the Limbin Prince arrived in Kengtung. Although the movement carries his name, evidence suggests he is only a figurehead, with the true power wielded by the Shan sawbwas.
Meanwhile, as the Limbin Prince followed the lonely trails into the highlands, war had broken out once again between Upper Burma and Britain: the third and final Anglo-Burmese war. The defeat of the Burmese at Mandalay by our forces was completed two weeks before the Limbin Prince arrived in Kengtung, but because of the vast and difficult terrain separating Kengtung from Mandalay, the news failed to reach the Confederacy until after he arrived. While we had hoped that the Limbin Confederacy would drop its resistance and submit to our rule, instead it switched its original aims and declared war on the British Crown in the name of Shan independence.
It is said that nature abhors a vacuum and this can also be said of politics. Indeed, the retreat of the Limbin Confederacy to Kengtung in 1883 had left vacant thrones in many of the powerful Shan muang, thrones which were rapidly filled by local warlords. Notable among these usurpers was a warrior named Twet Nga Lu, who became the de facto ruler of Mongnai. A native of Kengtawng (not to be confused with Kengtung—at times one wonders if the Shan have named their cities to confuse the English tongue), a substate of Mongnai, Twet Nga Lu was a defrocked monk turned local brigand whose violence was notorious throughout the region, earning him the nickname “the Bandit Chief.” Before the sawbwa of Mongnai had retreated to Kengtung, Twet Nga Lu had led several attacks on Mongnai. These were for the most part unsuccessful, and Twet Nga Lu changed his tactics from the battlefield to the bed, at last gaining power by marrying the widow of the sawbwa’s brother. When the sawbwa fled to Kengtung, Twet Nga Lu, with the support of Burmese officials, seized Mongnai completely.
Twet Nga Lu, along with the other de facto usurpers, ruled until earlier this year, 1886, when Limbin forces launched an offensive and reclaimed much of their land. Twet Nga Lu fled back to his native town, from which he continues a campaign of violence, leaving swaths of burned villages in the wake of his armies. The feud between him and the Mongnai sawbwa represents one of the greatest challenges to the establishment of peace. While the sawbwa commands the respect of his subjects, Twet Nga Lu is renowned not only for his ferocity but for his reputation as a master of tattoos and charms; his flesh is said to be embedded with hundreds of amulets which lend him invincibility, and for which he is feared and revered. (A short note: Such charms are an important aspect of both Burman and Shan culture. They can be anything from small gems to shells to sculptures of the Buddha, and are placed under the skin through a shallow incision. A particularly shocking variant is found mainly among fishermen: the implantation of stones and bells beneath the skin of male genitalia, a practice whose purpose and function continues to elude inquiries of this author.)
At the time of this report, the Limbin Confederacy continues to grow in power, and Twet Nga Lu remains at large, with evidence of his reign of terror visible in the embers of burned towns and slaughtered villagers. All efforts at negotiation have proved futile. From my command at the fort at Mae Lwin, I have been unable to make contact with the Limbin Confederacy, and my attempts to contact Twet Nga Lu have also failed. To date, there have been few confirmed British sightings of the warlord, and questions have even been raised as to whether the man truly exists, or whether he is just a legend, grown out of the summation of terror from hundreds of unassociated dacoit attacks. Nevertheless, a ransom has been issued for the Bandit Chief, dead or alive, one of many continuing efforts to bring peace to the Shan Plateau.
Edgar read the full report without stopping. There were some other short notes by Carroll, and they were all similar, filled with digressions into ethnography and natural history. On the first page of one, a survey of trade routes, the Doctor had scrawled at the top of the page, “Please include to educate the piano tuner as to the geography of the land.” Inside there were two appendices, one on the accessibility of certain mountain trails to the passage of artillery, the second a compendium of edible plants, “in case a party is lost without food,” with sketches of flower dissections and the name of each plant in five different tribal languages.
The contrast of the Doctor’s reports with the other official military notes he’d read was striking, and Edgar wondered if perhaps this was the source of some of the military’s enmity. He knew most of the officers were landed gentry, educated at the finest schools. So he could imagine their resentment of a man such as the Doctor, who came from a more modest background, but who seemed vastly more cultured. Perhaps this too is why I like him already, he thought. When Edgar had finished school, he had left home to live and work with a piano tuner in the City, an eccentric old man who believed that a good piano tuner must have knowledge not only of his instrument but of “Physics, Philosophy, and Poetics,” so that Edgar, although he never attended university, reached his twentieth birthday with more education than many who had.
There were other similarities as well, he thought. In many ways our professions are alike, rare in that they transcend class distinction—everyone becomes ill, and concert grands as well as gin-palace uprights get out of tune. Edgar wondered what this meant for the Doctor, for he had learned early that being needed was not the same as being accepted. Although he was a frequent visitor to upper-class homes where the owners of expensive pianos often engaged him in talk about music, he never felt welcome. And this distinct sense of estrangement extended in the other direction as well, as he often felt awkwardly refined in the presence of the carpenters or metalsmiths or porters whom he frequently contacted for his work. He remembered telling Katherine about this feeling of not belonging soon after they were married, one morning while they walked beside the Thames. She had only laughed, and kissed him, her cheeks reddened by the cold, her lips warm and moist. He remembered this almost as well as he remembered what she had said, Believe what you may about where you belong, all I care is that you are mine. As for other acquaintances, he found friendship in common interest, of the kind that now, steaming toward Rangoon, he felt toward the Doctor.