Looked at historically or contemporaneously, the British Government has never actually had a policy as such toward Myanmar or Burma, the name the former colonial government gave the country. Rather, British policy has been the result of multiple accidents and the making of policy has been the result of contingencies extraneous to Myanmar. Some of these policies have been the result of geography, especially Myanmar's presence on the eastern borders of the British Indian empire, between China and French Indochina with Siam as a nominal British dependency during the nineteenth century. Some have been the result of historical contingencies, such as the Japanese Occupation which unleashed militant Myanmar nationalism and militarism leading to the decision to hurriedly grant independence in 1948. Others have been the consequence of human relationships, such as the decision of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to return to Yangon from Oxford in 1988 to nurse her dying mother. All of these discreet circumstances, major or minor in the scales of human history, have had implications far beyond their immediate importance.

During the nineteenth century, British policy toward Burma evolved out of the advent of liberalism in imperial policy and the defence of Britain's growing influence in Asia more generally. The first Anglo-Burmese war, from 1824 to 1826, was the result of the clash of empires which occurred at the River Naaf as the British East India Company resisted the Konbaung dynasty's efforts to control anti-Innwa guerrilla forces. The consequent British administration of Rakhine and Tanintharyi which followed the defeat of the Myanmar forces was along standard company lines of the time. The Second Anglo-Burmese War of 1852 was largely the result of efforts to force British liberal trading policies on a recalcitrant mercantilist Myanmar state. Similarly, the Third Anglo-Burmese War in 1885 was prompted by the imposition of a fine on the Bombay-Burmah Trading Company by the Konbaung courts as well as concerns about the protection of general British economic and security interests in the region as French power was being progressively extended to the east of Myanmar.