Shan (Tai)

Shan State is south of Kachin State, directly east of Mandalay, and is the largest state in Burma with the largest ethnic minority population. It is also a state which for centuries enjoyed either independence or autonomy from the ethnic Burmans and their kings. From 1287 until 1604 the Shan ruled Upper Burma. Thereafter, although tributes were levied by the ethnic Burman kings, direct rule of Shan State was left to a series of princes and chiefs called saophas. Each of these presided over one of the principalities into which the State was divided.

When the British annexed Upper Burma in 1886 they recognized thirty-seven Shan princedoms. Whilst central and lower Burma were directly administered as a British colony, Shan State was treated as a protectorate with the saophas maintaining significant autonomy, including responsibility for administering economic policy, law, order and justice. Perhaps it was because of this autonomy that the Shan people remained loyal to the British when the Japanese invaded Burma in World War II. Many ethnic Burmans, on the other hand, supported the Japanese.

At the end of the war, it was a tribute to the diplomatic skills of Bogyoke Aung San that he was able to broker an agreement between the Shan and Burman peoples. This agreement, the Panglong Agreement of February 1947, stipulated that the Shan people would join the Union of Burma on the condition that after ten years of Burmese independence they would be granted the right to determine their own future. This future could be that of an autonomous state within the Union or they could secede. This agreement was included in the first Constitution of Burma.

The Panglong Agreement never came into effect. Bogyoke Aung San and other ethnic leaders were assassinated in June 1947 and thereafter, although independence was gained in January 1948 and the Union of Burma was formed, the country slid progressively into a state of chaos. Ethnic minorities took up arms and demanded autonomy, Kuomintang troops from China carved out their own territory in northern Burma and the Burmese Communist Party tried to manoeuvre itself into power. In a bid to restore stability in the country, parliament handed over power to General Ne Win’s military in 1958. The Shan people’s response came in April 1959 when thirty-four saophas evoked their positions as individual princes in Shan State and embraced the concept of one Shan State in the Shan State Council. Others gained positions in the Burmese National Government’s Upper House when democracy was restored to Burma in the elections of 1960. Then, on the night of 2nd March 1962, the military staged a coup d’état. Parliament was dissolved, ministers were imprisoned and General Ne Win formed his own seventeen-member Revolutionary Council. Shan Leader Sao Shwe Thaike, the first president of Burma, was taken into detention and later poisoned to death. His young 17 year old son, Sao Mee was shot dead on the night of the coup.

This is how the recent history of the Shan people in Burma began.

An excerpt from Timothy Syrota’s book; “Welcome to Burma”

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