WINSTON, William Ripley (1847-1918)

Four Years in Upper Burma

London: C. H. Kelly, 1892. 8vo. (7 1/4 x 5 1/4 inches). xii, 266, 10 [ads] pp. Illustrated with a folding map with coloured outline and numnerous in-text illusttrations throughout.

Publisher's gilt-stamped cloth

A Wesleyan missionary’s account of Upper Burma in the first years after British annexation, with detailed chapters on Mandalay, the Irrawaddy, local communities, and the home for lepers.

William Ripley Winston was among the first Wesleyan Methodist missionaries sent to Upper Burma after the British occupation of Mandalay and the annexation of the Kingdom in 1886. After fourteen years in North Ceylon, Winston helped establish the Wesleyan mission in Upper Burma, making Mandalay the center of the work and developing schools, preaching stations, and philanthropic institutions. Four Years in Upper Burma grew out of a shorter report on that work and became a wider account of the country, its recent political upheaval, and the practical difficulties of missionary life in a newly occupied colonial territory. The book opens with the British annexation of Upper Burma and proceeds through chapters on the journey to Mandalay, the city in 1887, the pacification of Upper Burma, British influence in the Shan States, intoxicants and opium, Buddhism, Burmese home life, the frontier peoples, and Winston's early missionary experiences. Winston writes with close first-hand observation, especially on Mandalay's religious buildings, local education, language, printing, domestic life, and the logistics of establishing schools and chapels. The tone is strongly period-coloured and missionary in outlook, with passages shaped by late nineteenth-century colonial assumptions; at the same time, the work preserves valuable contemporary detail on Mandalay and Upper Burma during the unsettled years following the fall of the Konbaung monarchy. The illustrations include views of Buddhist buildings, Mandalay, villages along the Irrawaddy, Burmese worship, monastic life, school-chapels at Pakokku and Mandalay, Chin women and girls, and the home for lepers at Mandalay. The folding map, titled "Province of Burma, East Indies," places the narrative within the newly expanded colonial province. Published by the Methodist house C. H. Kelly, the volume belongs to the literature of British missionary expansion after the Third Anglo-Burmese War, combining travel narrative, colonial description, religious polemic, and institutional report.

Item #42681

Price: $550.00