The Gold and Silver Road of Trade and Friendship: The McLeod and Richardson Diplomatic Missions to Tai States in 1837

by Volker Grabowsky, Andrew Turton

Overview

When British diplomats McLeod and Richardson set out on their missions to the Tai states in December 1836, their aim was trade and friendship. Captain William Couperus McLeod and Dr. David Richardson, both of the East India Company Madras Army, traveled from Moulmein on elephants, horses, and in the caravans of traders, to the present-day regions of the Shan States in Burma, northern Thailand, and Sipsong Panna in China. As the first Europeans to officially visit the region, they experienced some extraordinary social and cultural encounters.

McLeod and Richardson had been in action in the first Anglo-Burmese War (1824–6) and had experience of other missions in Burma and Siam. They were fluent in Burmese and had a basic knowledge of Tai. They wrote superbly of their journeys and diplomatic exchanges. Their journals are published here in full, with detailed notes, for the first time.

The richness of their narratives, their records of scientific, social, and cultural detail, their engaging insights, and some prejudices, make this engrossing reading for the enthusiast of travel and adventure literature. More than this, it is an essential new resource for scholars of many kinds—historians, anthropologists, geographers, and botanists, to name a few.

Grabowsky and Turton provide an analytical commentary on the journals, and on the conditions and contexts of their writing and subsequent use. The authors set the information in the journals in the context of indigenous Tai language sources. They also present completely new research on the British settlement in the Tenasserim Provinces of peninsular Burma, along with the biographies of McLeod and Richardson, who appear, for the first time, as three-dimensional individuals.

This volume is a state-of-the-art example of how to make archival material like these journals, which are among the finest of the period, accessible to a broad audience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789749575093
Publisher:	Silkworm Books
Publication date:	08/01/2003
Pages:	652
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Volker Grabowsky is professor of South East Asian history at the WestfUalische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. Andrew Turton is reader in anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

List of Maps and Tables

List of Illustrations

Abbreviations

Authors

Introduction: The Gold and Silver Road of Trade and Friendship

Part I. The Envoys and the Historical Context of their Missions

1. Political and Strategic Contexts

2. Dr. David Richardson

3. Captain William Couperus McLeod

4. Moulmeim and the Tenasserim Provinces

Part II. The Journeys and the Journals

5. The Journeys

6. The Journals

7. Use of the Journals

Part III. The Tai States as Seen in the Journals

8. Social and Political Organisation of Tributary Tai States

9. 'Siamese Shan'—Lan Na

10. 'Burmese Shan'—Shan States

11. 'Chinese Shan'—Chiang Rung and Sipsong Panna

12. Lawa and Karen

Part IV. The McLeod and Richardson Journals

13. Introductory Correspondence

14. Captain McLeod's 1837 Journal

—Moulmein to Lamphun

—Lamphun

—Chiang Mai

—Chiang Mai to Chiang Tung

—Chiang Tung

—Chiang Tung to Chiang Rung

—Chiang Rung

—Chiang Rung to Chiang Tung

—Chiang Tung

—Chiang Tung to Chiang Mai

—Chiang Mai

—Chiang Mai to Moulmein

15. Dr. Richardson's 1837 Journal

—Moulmein to Dwom Tulwee

—Dwom Tulwee

—Dwom Tulwee to Kundoo

—Kundoo—on the Karen

—Kundoo to Mok Mai

—Mok Mai

—Muang Nai

—Muang Nai to Yawnghwe

—Yawnghwe

—Yawnghwe to Ava

—Ava

Appendix 1. Maps: Sources and Notes

Appendix 2. Illustrations: Sources and Notes

Appendix 3. Itineraries of McLeod and Richardson

Appendix 4. Place-Names (Towns and Villages)

Appendix 5. Rivers and Streams

Appendix 6. Titles and Terms

References

Index