Thibaw Min

Thibaw သီပေါ‌မင်း
Thibaw circa 1880
King of Burma Prince of Thibaw
Reign	1 October 1878 – 29 November 1885 (&100000000000000070000007 years, &1000000000000005900000059 days)
Coronation	6 November 1878
Predecessor	Mindon
Successor	None (Monarchy abolished)
Chief Minister	Kinwun Mingyi U Kaung
Consort	Supayalat
Full name
Maung Pu (မောင်ပု) Siri Pavara Vijaya Nanta Yasatiloka Dhipati Pandita Maha Dhammarazadhiraza (သိရီပဝရ ဝိဇယာနန္တ ယသတိလောကာ ဓိပတိ ပဏ္ဍိတ မဟာဓမ္မရာဇာဓိရာဇာ)
House	Konbaung
Father	Mindon
Mother	Princess of Laungshe
Born	1 January 1859(1859-01-01) Mandalay
Died	19 December 1916(1916-12-19) (aged 57) Ratnagiri, India
Burial	Ratnagiri, India
Religion	Theravada Buddhism

Thibaw Min (Burmese: သီပေါ‌မင်း, pronounced [θìbɔ́ mɪ́ɴ]; 1 January 1859 – 19 December 1916) was the last king of the Konbaung dynasty of Burma (Myanmar). His reign ended when Burma was defeated by the forces of the British Empire in the Third Anglo-Burmese War, on 29 November 1885, prior to its official annexation on 1 January 1886.

A photograph of King Thibaw, Queen Supayalat and her sister Princess Supayagyi (November 1885)

King Thibaw's Royal Barge on the Mandalay Palace moat in 1885.

At the time of his accession half of Burma had been under British occupation for thirty years and it was no secret that the king intended to regain this territory. Relations had fouled during the early 1880s when the king was perceived as having made moves to closer align his country with the French. Relations deteriorated further in an incident later called the "Great Shoe Question" where visiting British dignitaries refused to remove their shoes before entering the royal palace and were subsequently banished.

A proclamation issued by the court of King Thibaw in 1885 which called on his countrymen to liberate Lower Burma was used by the British as pretext that he was a tyrant who reneged on his treaties and they decided to complete the conquest they had started in 1824. The invasion force which consisted of 11,000 men, a fleet of flat-bottomed boats and elephant batteries, was led by General Harry Prendergast.

"They reached the royal city with little opposition. The king and his queen had retired to a summer house in the palace gardens to await the British, with whom they intended to make peace. To distract their minds, the maidens of the Burmese court were dancing, while near at hand stood the royal elephants, laden with treasure and ready for flight. To the royal palace marched the British, to demand the surrender of the Burmese king and his kingdom within twenty-four hours. The blow had fallen at last. It was too late to think of escape. Early next morning King Thebaw was hurried into a bullock-cart with little ceremony, his queen into another, and in the presence of a great crowd of weeping and awestruck subjects, they were conveyed to a steamer on the Irawadi. Here a guard of British soldiers was drawn up: they presented arms on the appearance of the royal prisoners. As their bayonets flashed in the sunlight, the king fell on his knees in abject terror. "They will kill me," he cried wildly. "Save my life." His queen was braver. She strode on erect—her little child clinging to her dress—fierce and dauntless to the last. So the king and queen of Burma were exiled."
Synge, M.B., Growth of the British Empire; Annexation of Burma (1911), The Baldwin Project [1]

Though the partiality or accuracy of the story related above cannot now be proved, Thibaw, his wife Supayalat and two infant daughters were exiled to Ratnagiri, India, where they lived the rest of their lives in a dilapidated house in virtual isolation.

The brick palace in Ratnagiri, India, that Thibaw was exiled to.

King Thibaw himself gave an account of the reasons for his overthrow in a testimonial he wrote from exile for Esoof Cheroots (a brand of Indian cigarettes) and quoted by C. L. Keeton in his book King Thebaw and the Ecological Rape of Burma:

My late father, the Royal Mindon Min, the golden-footed lord of the white elephant, master of a thousand gold umbrellas, owner of the Royal peacocks, lord of the sea and of the world, whose face was like the sun, always smoked the Esoof cheroot while meditating on his treatment of the bull-faced, earthswallowing English. Had I done the same I should never have lost my throne, but I used the opium-drugged cheroots from Manila and the trash which was sent to me from San Francisco, and I fell.

After the death of the king in 1916, some of his family remained in exile while others attempted to return to their homeland. Phaya - Thibaw's eldest daughter - had apparently eloped with her driver remained in India and her surviving descendants were contacted by The Hindustan Times in 1995. A portion of that article is repeated below.

The collector's records say that when Phaya died, she was such a destitute that the locals of the village around collected money under the leadership of the collectorate for her funeral. Phaya left behind the daughter she had borne to Gopal, who had died earlier. This daughter, named Tu Tu, was brought up in poverty and not being educated, forgot all about her royal heritage except having one sorry looking poster painting of her mother in her home for veneration among the many household gods...Without money or education, Tu Tu married a local mechanic and had at least six or seven children, all of whom became more and more Indian in religion and culture as well as appearance. Tu Tu, for whom Burmese is a forgotten language, still lives in Ratnagiri as an old woman and speaks fluent Marathi with a rural Maharashtrian accent. She used to sell paper flowers to make a little money for her family in the days gone by.

—The Hindustan Times, 16 September 1995, 

The fate of the youngest daughter, Myat Phaya was not so sad. She was born at Ratnagiri in 1887 and was able to return to Burma in 1919 where she married U Naing, a former monk in 1921. She died at Moulmein on 3rd March 1936 having had issue four sons and two daughters. Her eldest son was assassinated in Burma in 1948 during the period leading up to independence while her second son Taw Phaya (b.1924) survives to this day in Burma where he enjoys some recognition as the heir to the Peacock Throne.

See Also

• France-Burma relations

References

• The Baldwin Project: Growth of the British Empire by M. B. Synge at www.mainlesson.com
• Political Topics And Discussion > Who Really Killed General Aung San? at www.bearpit.net

Links Media related to Thibaw Min at Wikimedia Commons

Thibaw Min Konbaung Dynasty Born: 1 January 1859 Died: 19 December 1916
Regnal titles
Preceded by Mindon	King of Burma 1 October 1878 – 29 November 1885	Succeeded by Burmese monarchy abolished
Royal titles
Preceded by Kanaung	Heir to the Burmese Throne as Prince of Thibaw 19 September 1878 – 1 October 1878	Succeeded by Myat Paya Lat (Presumed)