Burmese Independence 1948: Aung San and the End of British Burma

Burmese independence came on 4 January 1948, when Burma left British rule and became the Union of Burma, a republic outside the Commonwealth. Independence had been negotiated by the nationalist leader Aung San, but he did not live to see it: he was assassinated with several colleagues in July 1947. The new state inherited deep ethnic and political divisions that soon erupted into civil war.

Background: British Burma and the war

Britain conquered Burma in three wars between 1824 and 1885 and governed it as a province of British India until 1937, when it became a separate colony. A nationalist movement grew among students and young activists who called themselves “Thakins” (“masters”), a deliberate challenge to the title used for British officials.

During the Second World War Aung San and a group of comrades, the “Thirty Comrades”, trained with the Japanese and formed the Burma Independence Army, which entered the country with the Japanese invasion in 1942. Japan granted Burma nominal independence in 1943, but real power stayed with Tokyo. On 27 March 1945 Aung San’s forces turned against the Japanese and joined the Allies.

After the war Aung San led the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL), a broad coalition that pressed for rapid independence. Britain, exhausted by war and preparing for Indian independence, agreed to negotiate.

Negotiations in 1947

In January 1947 Aung San led a delegation to London. On 27 January he and the British prime minister, Clement Attlee, signed an agreement promising independence within a year, with elections for a constituent assembly.

Burma’s hill and frontier peoples had been governed separately under British rule, and their future was uncertain. At Panglong in the Shan State, on 12 February 1947, Aung San signed an agreement with Shan, Kachin and Chin leaders in which they agreed to join a united Burma in return for a degree of autonomy. The Karen and some other groups did not take part.

In April 1947 the AFPFL won an overwhelming majority in the constituent assembly elections. The assembly began drafting a constitution for a federal union.

The assassination of Aung San

On the morning of 19 July 1947, gunmen burst into a meeting of the governor’s Executive Council in the Secretariat building in Rangoon and opened fire. Aung San, aged 32, was killed together with six fellow council members and two others, a civil servant and a bodyguard.

The attack had been organised by U Saw, a former prime minister of colonial Burma and a rival of Aung San. He was arrested the same day, convicted and hanged on 8 May 1948. The killing deprived Burma of the leader best placed to hold its communities together. The date is commemorated as Martyrs’ Day.

Independence day

The governor, Sir Hubert Rance, asked Thakin Nu, later known as U Nu, to form a government. The constituent assembly adopted the constitution on 24 September 1947, and the Nu-Attlee Treaty, signed in London on 17 October 1947, settled the terms of the transfer. The British Parliament passed the Burma Independence Act later that year.

Independence took effect at 4:20 am on 4 January 1948, a time chosen by astrologers as auspicious. The British flag was lowered in Rangoon, and Sao Shwe Thaik, a Shan prince, became the first president, with U Nu as prime minister. Unlike India, Pakistan and Ceylon, Burma did not join the Commonwealth.

Aftermath

Within months the new state faced armed revolt. The Communist Party of Burma rose in March 1948, parts of the army mutinied, and in January 1949 the Karen National Union began an insurrection that became one of the world’s longest-running conflicts. At one point in 1949 the government controlled little more than Rangoon.

The army, led by General Ne Win, gradually restored control, and its role in saving the state increased its political power. Ne Win took over as head of a caretaker government in 1958 and seized power in a coup in 1962, beginning decades of military rule. Ethnic conflicts that began in 1948–1949 continue in Myanmar today.

Timeline

• 1937, 1 April: Burma is separated from British India.
• 1945, 27 March: Aung San’s army turns against the Japanese.
• 1947, 27 January: The Aung San-Attlee Agreement is signed in London.
• 1947, 12 February: The Panglong Agreement is signed.
• 1947, 19 July: Aung San and colleagues are assassinated in Rangoon.
• 1947, 24 September: The constituent assembly adopts the constitution.
• 1947, 17 October: The Nu-Attlee Treaty is signed.
• 1948, 4 January: Burma becomes independent.
• 1949, January: The Karen insurgency begins.

Why it matters

Burma’s independence ended more than a century of British rule and created one of the first new states of post-war Asia, alongside India and Pakistan. The early loss of Aung San and the unresolved questions of ethnic autonomy left a fragile union whose conflicts, and whose drift towards military rule, still shape Myanmar today. It also formed part of the wider end of empire in Asia that followed the surrender of Japan.