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First Anglo-Burmese War

Also known as Treaty of Yandabo

The First Anglo-Burmese War of 1824–1826 was fought between the East India Company and the Konbaung kingdom of Burma over the borderlands of Assam, Manipur and Arakan, and ended with the treaty of Yandabo, by which Burma ceded those territories and Tenasserim.

Causes

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Konbaung kings of Burma expanded west. Bodawpaya conquered Arakan in 1784–85, and refugees from Arakan fled into British Bengal, where some raided back across the border. Under Bagyidaw, Burmese armies intervened in the civil wars of the Ahom kingdom of Assam from 1817 and occupied it, and they took Manipur and threatened Cachar. The Burmese and British claims met along an ill-defined frontier, and disputes over an island near Chittagong and over Cachar led the governor-general, Lord Amherst, to declare war in March 1824.

The war

The Burmese general Maha Bandula advanced into Bengal from Arakan and defeated a British force at Ramu, causing alarm in Calcutta. The British answered with a seaborne expedition under Archibald Campbell that took Rangoon in May 1824. The Burmese army was recalled to retake it but was defeated outside Rangoon in December. Bandula was killed by a rocket at Danubyu in April 1825. He is remembered in Myanmar as a national hero, and streets and a park in Yangon bear his name. The British advanced slowly up the Irrawaddy, while other forces cleared Assam, Manipur and Arakan.

The war was the longest and most expensive the Company had fought in India. Disease killed far more of its soldiers than battle did, especially in Arakan and Rangoon. Sepoys at Barrackpore who refused to go by sea to Burma, because crossing the sea was held to break caste, mutinied in 1824 and were fired on by British troops.

Yandabo

With the British army within a few days' march of the capital at Ava, the Burmese court agreed to terms at Yandabo on 24 February 1826. Burma ceded Assam, Manipur, Arakan and the Tenasserim coast, recognised Cachar and Jaintia as outside its sphere, agreed to pay an indemnity of one million pounds in instalments, and accepted a British resident at Ava.

Consequences

The treaty brought Assam under British rule, where the Company soon developed tea plantations, and made Manipur a protected state. For Burma it was a heavy humiliation and a financial burden, and it began a series of conflicts with Britain that led to the second war of 1852 and the final annexation of 1885.

Further reading

  • Metcalf, Barbara D. A Concise History of Modern India. Cambridge University Press, 2012
  • Bayly, C. A. Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire. Cambridge University Press, 1988
  • Keay, John. India: A History. HarperCollins, 2000

See also

  • Konbaung Dynasty — The Konbaung dynasty was the last royal house of Burma, founded by Alaungpaya in 1752, which reunited the country, sacked Ayutthaya, repelled Chinese invasions and expanded into Arakan, Manipur and Assam, before losing its kingdom to the British in three wars between 1824 and 1885.
  • Ahom dynasty — The Ahom dynasty was a Tai-descended royal line that ruled the Brahmaputra valley of Assam from 1228 to 1826, notable for resisting Mughal conquest and for the historical chronicles, the Buranjis, its administration produced.
  • Manipur — Manipur was ruled by the Ningthouja dynasty from the Kangla at Imphal, and its court chronicle, the Cheitharol Kumbaba, is one of the longest continuous royal records in Asia.
  • East India Company — The East India Company (EIC) was an English joint-stock trading corporation, chartered in 1600, that expanded from a monopoly on Asian trade into the paramount political and military power on the Indian subcontinent before its dissolution in 1858.

This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.