"Rangoon Islam": An (Other) Religious Economy in the Indian Ocean, c.1850-1915

• In Event: Burma in the World/Burma and the World: Celebrating the Career of Michael Adas - Sponsored by the Burma Studies Group

Abstract

Colonial rule witnessed the transformation of Rangoon into a new religious marketplace in which Burmese Buddhists were forced to compete with immigrant Christian, Muslim and other religious firms who freely established themselves in Burma's busiest port city.  By examining this transformation, this paper makes three contributions to the placing of Burmese history in a more global and comparative context. Firstly, it focuses on the Muslims of Burma and uses Urdu source materials never previously brought to bear on Burmese Studies. Secondly, it connects Rangoon to a larger Indian Ocean arena by making comparisons to Bombay in particular as well as other port cities undergoing parallel developments. Thirdly, it deploys the model of religious economy to position Muslim religious entrepreneurs among their Buddhist and Christian competitors in the same emergent marketplace.  In this way, the paper shows how mass immigration, the spread of print culture, the adaptable model of the Christian mission and the disestablishment of state Buddhism each had a role to play in the making of Burma's new religious terrains of exchange.  Overall, the paper argues that Rangoon (and the inland cities to which it was connected by train and steamer) conformed to the larger pattern around the Indian Ocean of the emergence of newly industrialized, liberalized, innovative and competitive religious economies which were concomitant with colonial rule but driven by interaction between local and migrant actors.

Author

• Nile Green, University of California, Los Angeles