¹ ‘Enclosure No. 4. Through the Judicial Commissioner, Upper Burma. His Honour the Lieutenant Governor of Burma, His Excellency the Viceroy and Governor General of India. To the Right Honorable Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Secretary of State for India. Dated, Mandalay the 7th February 1917’. In ‘Memorial from Mr H E McColl, ICS, Senior Divisional Judge, Burma, as to his non-selection for appointments’. India Office Records, British Library (hereafter IOR) L/PJ/6/1499, File 3635.

² Laura Stoler, Ann, ‘Making empire respectable: The politics of race and sexual morality in 20th-century colonial cultures’, American Ethnologist, vol. 16, no. 4, 1989, pp. 634–660CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Laura Stoler, Ann, ‘Sexual affronts and racial frontiers: European identities and the cultural politics of exclusions in colonial Southeast Asia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 34, no. 3, 1992, pp. 514–551CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ghosh, Durba, Sex and the family in colonial India: The making of empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ikeya, Chie, ‘Colonial intimacies in comparative perspective: Intermarriage, law and cultural difference in British Burma’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, vol. 14, no. 1, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁵ Previous scholarship has hardly ever examined Burma as a British Indian frontier. Most works on frontier and Burma focus either on agricultural reclamation in the Irrawaddy Delta or on the (ethnic) borderlands of Myanmar. See Leach, Edmund R., ‘The frontiers of “Burma”’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 3, no. 1, 1960, pp. 49–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adas, Michael, The Burma Delta: Economic development and social change on an Asian rice frontier, 1852–1941 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Tagliacozzo, Eric, ‘Ambiguous commodities, unstable frontiers: The case of Burma, Siam, and imperial Britain, 1800–1900’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 46, no. 2, 2004, pp. 354–377CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Charney, Michael W., ‘Literary culture on the Burma-Manipur frontier in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, Medieval History Journal, vol. 14, no. 2, 2011, pp. 159–181CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sadan, Mandy, Being and becoming Kachin: Histories beyond the state in the borderworlds of Burma (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Khan Pau, Pum, Indo-Burma frontier and the making of the Chin Hills: Empire and resistance (New Delhi: Routledge India, 2021)Google Scholar. Scholarship on northeastern Indian frontiers largely focuses on the area of the colonial-era ‘North-East Frontier’, which excludes Burma. This line of work is voluminous; for a recent example, see Ray, Reeju, Placing the frontier in British North-East India: Law, custom, and knowledge (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2023)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The spatial perspective that considers Burma as an Indian frontier draws inspiration from recent Indian Ocean historiography, such as Mukherjee, Rila (ed.), Pelagic passageways: The northern Bay of Bengal before colonialism (Delhi: Primus Books, 2011)Google Scholar; Amrith, Sunil S., Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The furies of nature and the fortunes of migrants (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ramnath, Kalyani, Boats in a storm: Law, migration, and decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942–1962 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2023).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁷ Myint-U, Thant, The making of modern Burma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 186–218.Google Scholar

⁸ Ibid.; Aung-Thwin, Michael, ‘The British “pacification” of Burma: Order without meaning’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 16, no. 2, 1985, pp. 245–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹⁰ Astroh, Michael, Grattan-Guinness, Ivor and Read, Stephen, ‘A survey of the life of Hugh MacColl (1837–1909)’, History and Philosophy of Logic, vol. 22, no. 2, 2001, pp. 81–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robert Buckland, Augustus, ‘MacColl, Malcolm’, Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 Supplement, Vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912).Google Scholar

¹¹ Venn, J. A. (ed.), Alumni Cantabrigienses: A biographical list of all known students, graduates and holders of office at the University of Cambridge, from the earliest times to 1900, Part II, Vol. IV (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), p. Google Scholar; ‘H E McColl; Selected Candidate for Burma, 1889; Requests Information on Surety’. IOR/L/PJ/6/274, File 641: 10 April 1890.

¹² ‘Postings of new civilians’, The Pioneer, Sunday, 18 October 1891, p. 4; ‘New novels: A. J. Combridge and Co., Bombay’, The Pioneer, Thursday, 28 May 1891, p. 8.

¹³ For H. E. McColl’s arrival date, see The India Office list for 1911 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1911), p. 578; for Hugh Herbert McColl and Alexander Malcolm McColl’s birth and age information, see ‘Schedule 196, 34 College Road, Clifton, Bristol, Gloucestershire’, Census returns of England and Wales, 1911, RG14/14831, p. 198, TNA; also The India Office list for 1937 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1937), p. 763. For interracial intimacy between British colonial officials and Burmese women, see Ikeya, ‘Colonial intimacies in comparative perspective’.

¹⁴ ‘Burma gazette: General department’, The Pioneer, Tuesday, 27 June 1893, p. 8.

¹⁵ ‘Burma gazette: Appointment department’, The Pioneer, Saturday, 30 November 1895, p. 7; Ballhatchet, Kenneth, Race, sex and class under the Raj: Imperial attitudes and policies and their critics, 1793–1905 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1980), pp. 148–149Google Scholar; The India Office list for 1911, p. 578.

¹⁶ ‘Burma orders’, Times of India, 23 February 1898, p. 3.

¹⁷ ‘Conduct of Mr. H. E. McColl, I.C.S., in Connection with Certain Defalcations at the Myaungmya Treasury’, 357. IOR/L/PJ/6/581, File 1916. This document mistook Maung Po Than for McColl’s brother-in-law. Corrected according to McColl’s memorial, ‘Memorial of H. E. McColl, Assistant Commissioner, Burma, To the Right Honourable Lord Curzon of Kedleston, P.C., G.M.S.I., G.M.I.E., Viceroy of India, 10th October 1901’. In ‘The Case of Mr H E McColl, ICS, Burma’. IOR/L/PJ/6/616, File 2327.

¹⁸ ‘Conduct of Mr. McColl’, pp. 357–358.

¹⁹ Ibid., p. 357.

²⁰ Ibid., p. 355.

²¹ Ibid.

²² ‘Enclosure B. Read the explanation of the Treasurer and the Report of the Treasury Officer’. In ‘Conduct of Mr. McColl’, p. 359.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ ‘Conduct of Mr. McColl’, p. 356.

²⁵ Siok-Hwa, Cheng, The rice industry of Burma, 1852–1940 (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1968), Google Scholar; ‘Enclosure No. 4. No. 873—7-C.-32, dated the 29th May 1901. From—The Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma, To—The Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department’, p. 6. In ‘The Case of Mr McColl’.

²⁶ ‘Conduct of Mr. McColl’, p. 356.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Ibid., p. 358.

²⁹ ‘No. 338, dated the 10th May 1901. From—J. P. Hewett, Esq., C.S.I., C.I.E., Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, To—The Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma’. In ‘Conduct of Mr. McColl’, p. 360.

³⁰ Ibid.; ‘Enclosure No. 4. No.873—7-C.-32, dated the 29th May 1901’, pp. 6, 9. Italics in original.

³¹ Ibid.

³² ‘Enclosure No. 4. No.873—7-C.-32, dated the 29th May 1901’, p. 6.

³³ ‘The case of Mr H E McColl, ICS, Burma Commission; proposal to compensate him for the postponement of promotion due to a mistake in the Civil List’. IOR/L/PJ/6/655, File 2766.

³⁴ ‘The Case of Mr McColl’, Minute, 8. IOR/L/PJ/6/616.

³⁵ Ibid., p. 5.

³⁶ ‘Enclosure No. 5. No.538, dated Simla, the 13th August 1901. From—J. P. Hewett, Esq., C.S.I., C.I.E., Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, To—The Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma’, p. 9. In ‘The Case of Mr McColl’.

³⁷ Ibid., p. 10.

³⁸ ‘Memorial of H. E. McColl…10th October 1901’, pp. 11–12. In ‘The Case of Mr McColl’.

³⁹ ‘Enclosure No. 8. No.174-T.—7-C—31, dated Myitkyina, the 10th July 1902. From—The Honourable Mr. C. G. Bayne, I.C.S., Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma, To—The Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department’, p. 21. In ‘The Case of Mr McColl’.

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ ‘Enclosure No. 10. No.646—7-C—31, dated Rangoon, the 22nd July 1902. From—The Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma, To—The Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department’, p. 1. In ‘The Case of Mr McColl’.

⁴² Ibid., p. 3.

⁴³ ‘No. 80 of 1902. Government of India. Home Department. To the Right Honourable Lord George Francis Hamilton, His Majesty’s Secretary of State for India. Simla, the 2nd October 1902’, pp. 1, 4. In ‘The Case of Mr McColl’.

⁴⁴ Ghosh, Sex and the family in colonial India.

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⁴⁹ Hugh Tinker, ‘Philip Mason obituary: Last witness to the Raj’, The Guardian, Tuesday, 2 February 1999.

⁵⁰ It is not uncommon for agrarian river valley areas to be considered frontiers. See, for example, Adas, The Burma Delta; Richard, M. Eaton, The rise of Islam and the Bengal frontier, 1204–1760 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Iqbal, Iftekhar, The Bengal Delta: Ecology, state and social change, 1840–1943 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁵⁴ For colonial anthropology and the designation of tribal status, see Simpson, The frontier in British India, pp. 172–181; Ray, Placing the frontier, p. 132. For more recent characterizations of the various ‘cosmopolises’ of Great Traditions, see Pollock, Sheldon, The language of the gods in the world of men: Sanskrit, culture, and power in premodern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009)Google Scholar; Ricci, Ronit, Islam translated: Literature, conversion, and the Arabic cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁵ Hopkins, Ruling the savage periphery, p. 14.

⁵⁶ Ray, Placing the frontier, p. 190.

⁵⁷ Lewis Beverley, Eric, ‘Frontier as resource: Law, crime, and sovereignty on the margins of empire’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 55, no. 2, 2013, pp. 241–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁸ For Lower Burma as frontier, see Adas, The Burma Delta; for Zomia and Burma, see van Schendel, Willem, ‘Geographies of knowing, geographies of ignorance: Jumping scale in Southeast Asia’, Environment and planning D: Society and Space, vol. 20, no. 6, 2002, pp. 647–668CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scott, James C., The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009)Google ScholarPubMed; Michaud, Jean, ‘Editorial—Zomia and beyond’, Journal of Global History, vol. 5, no. 2, 2010, pp. 187–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sadan, Being and becoming Kachin, pp. 25–26. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer at Modern Asian Studies for suggesting the idea of a three-layered ‘variegated frontier-ness’ in Burma.

⁵⁹ For example, Mitra Sharafi has characterized the Parsi influx into Burma in the late nineteenth century as a search for opportunities to go from ‘rags to riches’. See Sharafi, Mitra, Law and identity in colonial South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. CrossRefGoogle Scholar, n. 98; Mitra June Sharafi, ‘Bella’s case: Parsi identity and the law in colonial Rangoon, Bombay and London, 1887–1925’, PhD thesis, Princeton University, 2006, pp. 48–49. Although what Sharafi discusses was the Rangoon context in Lower Burma, the vision for opportunities to seek fortunes was further magnified in Upper Burma due to rich natural resources and a strong corporate presence over a poor state presence. For corporate power over state power in Upper Burma, see, for example, Baillargeon, David, ‘“Imperium in imperio”: The corporation, mining, and governance in British Southeast Asia, 1900–1930’, Enterprise and Society, vol. 23, no. 2, 2022, pp. 325–356Google Scholar. For the relationship between strong corporate power and frontier place-making, see Kar, Bodhisattva, ‘Nomadic capital and speculative tribes: A culture of contracts in the northeastern frontier of British India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 53, no. 1, 2016, pp. 41–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁶⁴ Pennell, A. P, ‘Letter and enclosures from Mr. A. P. Pennell to Under Secretary of State, 10 Aug. 1901’, Correspondence relating to the removal of Mr. A. P. Pennell from the Indian Civil Service (London: Darling and Son, 1902), p. .Google Scholar

⁶⁵ White, A civil servant in Burma, pp. 7–8.

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⁶⁸ Ibid.

⁶⁹ The India list: Civil and military, July 1888 (London: W. H. Allen and Co., 1888), 54; The India list and the India Office list for 1898 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1898), p. 39; The India list and the India Office list for 1902 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1902), pp. 39–40; The India list and the India Office list for 1905 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1905), p. 70; The India Office list for 1908 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1908), p. 82; The India Office list for 1916 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1916), p. 82. This trend did not change even after the turmoil of the Great War and Depression, with 21 European officers in the Judicial Department in 1929 and 17 in 1939. See Woodruff, The men who ruled India, pp. 364–365.

⁷⁰ White, A civil servant in Burma, pp. 280–283.

⁷¹ Ibid., p. 282; Furnivall, Colonial policy and practice, p. 136; Ranjan Chakravarti, Nalini, The Indian minority in Burma: The rise and decline of an immigrant community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. .Google Scholar

⁷² For an example of the ICS Indian language examination and its preparation industry, see Guide to employment in the civil service, the system of open competition, and offices and salaries in the various departments (London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin and Co., 1882), pp. 269–270, 276–278, 288.

⁷³ Twenty-seventh report of Her Majesty’s civil service commissioners (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1883), p. xiv.

⁷⁴ Ibid., p. 485; Dormer Augustus Chase, Lieut., Anglo-Burmese hand-book, or guide to a practical knowledge of the Burmese language (Maulmain: American Mission Press, 1852).

⁷⁵ Anderson, John, Mandalay to Momien: A narrative of the two expeditions to western China of 1868 and 1875, under Colonel Edward B. Sladen and Colonel Horace Browne (London: Macmillan, 1876).Google Scholar

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⁷⁷ St John, R. F. St Andrew, A Burmese reader: Being an easy introduction to the written language and companion to Judson’s grammar (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894).Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Nyein, U Tun, The student’s English-Burmese dictionary (Rangoon: Burma Government Press, 1906)Google Scholar; R. C. T., ‘Review of The student’s English-Burmese dictionary. By Tun Nyein. Rangoon, 1906’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 41, no. 2, 1909, p. 510; Brown, Ian, The School of Oriental and African Studies: Imperial training and the expansion of learning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. .CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁸⁰ Philip Hartog to Cromer, 9 February 1912, SOAS R3/2, Special Collections, SOAS University of London; Brown, The School of Oriental and African Studies, pp. 9–10; Report of the committee appointed by the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury to consider the organisation of Oriental Studies in London (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1909), p. 14.

⁸¹ Minutes of evidence taken by the committee appointed by the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury to consider the organisation of Oriental Studies in London (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1909), pp. 19–20, 189–191. For average enrolment numbers in occasional Burmese language classes at University College, see Report of the committee … to consider the organisation of Oriental Studies in London, p. 65.

⁸² Lammerts, D. Christian, Buddhist law in Burma: A history of Dhammasattha texts and jurisprudence, 1250–1850 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2018).Google Scholar

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⁸⁴ John Jardine, Notes on Buddhist law, by the Judicial Commissioner, British Burma, 8 vols (Rangoon: Office of the Superintendent, 1882–1883); Chan-Toon, , The principles of Buddhist law (Rangoon: Myles Standish and Co., 1894).Google Scholar

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⁸⁶ ‘Sir G. W. Shaw’, The Times, 28 November 1931, p. 12.

⁸⁷ Ballhatchet, Race, sex and class, p. 151; The India Office list for 1911, p. 578.

⁸⁸ ‘Polygamy in Burma’, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, Calcutta, 19 September 1908, p. 9.

⁸⁹ The significant increase in litigation in Upper Burma around 1910 is recorded in ‘Upper Burma’, Reports on the administration of civil justice for the year 1911 (Rangoon: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1912), pp. 14–15; ‘Upper Burma’, Reports on the administration of civil justice for the year 1912 (Rangoon: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1913), p. 9.

⁹⁰ Hastings, Warren and Higginson, Alexander, ‘A plan for the administration of justice, extracted from the proceedings of the committee of circuit, 15th August, 1772’, in Proceedings of the Governor and Council at Fort William, respecting the administration of justice amongst the natives in Bengal (Calcutta: Fort William, 1774), p. .Google Scholar

⁹¹ The India Office list for 1911, p. 578.

⁹² ‘Death of Justice Moore; His successor’, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, Calcutta, 25 June 1909, p. 6.

⁹³ Venn (ed.), Alumni Cantabrigienses, p. 257.

⁹⁴ For example, see Upper Burma rulings, 1904–06, Civil, Vol. II (Rangoon: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1914).

⁹⁵ The description of such judicial work as ‘thankless’ is from White, A civil servant in Burma, p. 280.

⁹⁶ ‘Enclosure No. 3. No.890-2M., dated Rangoon, the 26th February 1917. From—The Hon’ble Mr. W. F. Rice, C.S.I., I.C.S., Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma, Appointment Department, To—The Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department’, p. 3. In ‘Memorial from Mr H E McColl’.

⁹⁷ On a theory of Upper Burma (anyā Myanmā) as a place of Burman cultural authenticity, see Aung-Thwin, Michael A., The mists of Rāmañña: The legend that was Lower Burma (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005).Google Scholar

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¹⁰⁰ Bhaumik, Parthasarathi, Bengalis in Burma: A colonial encounter (1886–1948) (London: Routledge, 2022), p. .Google Scholar

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¹⁰² ‘Upper Burma’, Reports on the administration of civil justice for the year 1908 (Rangoon: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1909), p. 10. For another mention of almost exactly the same situation, see ‘Upper Burma’, Reports on the administration of civil justice for the year 1910 (Rangoon: Office of the Superintendent, Government Printing, 1911), p. 12.

¹⁰³ Orwell, George, ‘Shooting an elephant’, in Orwell, George, Shooting an elephant and other essays (London: Penguin, 2003), pp. 31–40.Google Scholar

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¹⁰⁷ ‘Enclosure No. 1, No.1395-3-L.-3, dated Rangoon, the 30th August 1916. From—The Hon’ble Mr. W. F. Rice, C.S.I., I.C.S., Chief Secretary to the Government of Burma, Appointment Department, To—The Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department’, p. 1. In ‘Memorial from Mr H E McColl’.

¹⁰⁸ ‘Minute Paper’, pp. 1–2. In ‘Memorial from Mr H E McColl’.

¹⁰⁹ ‘Enclosure No. 2’, p. 2. In ‘Memorial from Mr H E McColl’. The obsession with speed and efficiency was characteristic of nineteenth-century imperial bureaucracy in India, which often associated efficiency with impartiality, aloofness, and detachment. See Wilson, Jon, ‘The temperament of empire: Law and conquest in late 19th-century India’, in Subjects, citizens and law: Colonial and independent India, (eds) Cederlöf, Gunnel and Das Gupta, Sanjukta (London: Routledge, 2017), p. .Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ ‘Enclosure No. 4. Through…To the Right Honorable Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Secretary of State for India. Dated, Mandalay the 7th February 1917’, pp. 3–5. In ‘Memorial from Mr H E McColl’.

¹¹¹ Ibid., pp. 5–6.

¹¹² ‘Enclosure No. 3. …dated Rangoon, the 26th February 1917’, pp. 2–3. In ‘Memorial from Mr H E McColl’.

¹¹³ Ibid., p. 3.

¹¹⁴ ‘Enclosure No. 2’, p. 3. In ‘Memorial from Mr H E McColl’.

¹¹⁵ Guha, ‘Not at home in empire’.

¹¹⁶ ‘The Rangoon High Court: Letters patent issued’, The Tribune, Lahore, Sunday, 26 November 1922, p. 3.

¹¹⁷ ‘News of the day: Mr. H. E. Maccoll’, The Amrita Bazar Patrika, Calcutta, Tuesday, 12 December 1922.

¹¹⁸ Saha, ‘The male state’, p. 372, n. 120. I would like to thank Mitra Sharafi for bringing this reference to my attention.

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