Arakan: - One Who Preserves and Takes Care of Their Own Nationality.

Publication by Arakan Action Association (AAA.)

Arakan Library was founded by a group of Arakan Action Association (AAA) in exile in Thailand from Burma in 2007 doing to voice for the knowledge, the people democratic and human rights.

 

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Arakan Action Association (AAA)

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Email : arakanactionassociation@walla.com , +66—089-637-4383, +66—053-409-577

Oil in Burma

by  <Marilyn v. Longuir>

Arakan and Yenangyaung

A province stretching for almost 600 kilometres along the western coastline of Burma, Arakan is separated from Burma proper by a rugged mountain range, the Arakan Yoma(hills or mountains). It has been described simply as "a land of creeks and chaungs [small rivers], where transport is largely by water… the coast is part sandy beach, part mangrove swamp, and some of the chaungs are tidal. In the flat valleys are hillocks covered with peepul trees and bamboo" (Allen, 91). The country was ceded to the British by the Kingdom of Ava (Burma) under the Treaty of Yandabo in 1826. For many centuries an independent kingdom, Arakan had only formed part of the Burmese Empire since 1784, when the armies of King Bodawpaya  (1781-1819) conquerors forced many Arakanese to flee across the border to Chittagong in British Bengal. Incursions by Burmese troops into British territory to recapture these rebels were one of the causes of the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824-26).

 

A curious legend recounted fully in Chapter 3 connects Arakan with the famous Yenangyaung oil fields in Upper Burma. It tells of an unnamed Burmese king who left behind a group of Arakanese prisoners as pagoda slaves near Yenangyaung (Pascoe 1912, 73). There is no evidence to corroborate this story, but the fact that there were ancient oil wells and seepage in Arakan gives added credibility to this tantalizing tale. Without more information, however, it remains simply a legend. The Burmese would have us believe that the wells of Yenangyaung have been worked for at least a thousand years (MBK, 12; Khin Maung Gyi, 2), though the actual age of this industry remains in contention. The earliest European reference to "Yaynangong" {Yenangyaung} was made by Captain George Baker (1808a, 147; and 1808b, 172) in 1755, while the earliest British reference to the Arakan fields dates from 1833.