ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 57| June 2002
On the Road to Mandalay
![]() |
| ‘Inside view of the Gold Temple of the Great Dagon Pagoda [the Shwedagon] at Rangoon’ engraving by G. Hunt in Moore’s Views Taken at Rangoon. London, 1825–1826 |
Colonial era Burma may evoke romantic images of pagodas and tropical seas as in Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem ‘The Road to Mandalay’. A recent lecture at the National Library painted a very different picture of Britain’s treatment of Burma’s people, Buddhist temples and royal palaces. In her Harold White Fellowship address Dr Penny Edwards graphically described how three wars and the desecration of key sites marked Britain’s nineteenth-century conquest of Burma.
![]() |
| Penny Edwards (right) at her Harold White Fellowship lecture with Ma Khin Mar Mar Kyi, researcher on Burma at the Australian National University |
Penny is a 2002 Harold White Fellow at the National Library. She has worked for the United Nations and Amnesty International, and is currently attached to the Centre for Cross Cultural Research at the Australian National University.
In the twentieth century Burma’s ancient temples emerged as major areas of contest between the British colonial administration and local feelings. Penny is carrying out a research project at the National Library focusing on the temples of Pagan and Shwedagon as sites for constructing national identity and contesting national legitimacy. This research aims to improve understanding of the relationship between cultural policy and national identity in colonial Burma and its legacy in contemporary Myanmar.
The project draws on a broad array of colonial literature and
visual documents. In particular the National Library holds the Luce Collection
of 2000 monographs, serials, manuscripts, maps and photographs relating to Burma.
Gordon Hannington Luce (1889–1979) is widely regarded as the foremost European
scholar on Burma. The Library also holds other important colonial era and contemporary
resources in English and Burmese, including official documents, journals and
newspapers.
—Andrew Gosling
Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: gateways@nla.gov.au