Thomas Thornville Cooper (1839–1878) was an English traveller in China, and later a political agent in Burma.
Thomas Thornville Cooper (1839–1878) was an English traveller in China, and later a political agent in Burma.
The eighth son of John Ibbetson Cooper, a coalfitter and shipowner, he was born on 13 September 1839, at Bishopwearmouth, County Durham. He was educated at the Grange School there, under James Cowan. He was then sent to a tutor in Sussex, where his health failed. [1] [2]
Cooper was advised to take a voyage to Australia. There he made journeys into the outback. In 1859 he went to India, and worked in Madras, in the house of Arbuthnot & Co. In 1861 he left his appointment, and went to Sindh on a visit to a brother who was living there. The following year, he visited Bombay, and moved in by way of Beypore and Madras to Burma. At Rangoon he studied the Burmese language. [2]
In 1863 Cooper took ship to rejoin his brother, who was now at Shanghai. He became involved with the Shanghai volunteers of the Taiping Rebellion. When it ended, the opening up of China to foreign commerce proceeded. In 1868 Cooper, at the invitation of the Shanghai chamber of commerce, tried to travel through Tibet to India. On 4 January he left Hankou and travelled by way of Chengdu, Kangding, and Litang to Batang. From this point he had hoped to reach Rima on the Lohit River, over the Hengduan Mountains watershed, in eight days. [2]
The Chinese authorities then intervened, forbidding Cooper to continue westwards. He therefore decided to take the Dali City route to Bhamo. [2] It involved at that time traversing the Panthay kingdom, the site of a Muslim insurgency, with its capital at Dali. [1] [3]
Cooper therefore struck southwards, following the valley of the Lancang Jiang and reached Zegu on its western bank. This was the most westerly point that had been explored by Westerners starting from China, in the region of the major rivers north of Bhamo. Here he was within a hundred miles of Manchi (Mangkyi), then in Hkamti Long, a Shan state. It is on the N'Mai River, and had been visited by the military surveyor Richard Wilcox, from India, in 1826. [2]
Still continuing his journey southwards, Cooper arrived at Weixi City, nearly due west of Lijiang, where he obtained passports for Dali City. At a distance of three days' journey from Weixi, however, he was stopped by a local chief, who refused to allow him to proceed. He was compelled, therefore, to return to Weixi, where he was imprisoned and threatened with death by the civil authorities: he was suspected of being in touch with the Panthay rebels. For five weeks he was kept prisoner, and was then (6 August) allowed to depart. [2]
Cooper then returned to Ya'an, and travelled down the Min River to Yibin, on the Yangzi River. He descended the Yangzi to Hankou, where he arrived on 11 November 1868. He shortly returned to England. [2]
Having failed to reach India from China, Cooper attempted in 1869 to reverse the process, and to enter China from Assam. On this journey he left Sadiya in October of that year, and passing up the line of the Brahmaputra, through the Mishmi country, reached Prun, a village about twenty miles from Rima. Here he again met with such determined opposition from the authorities, that he was obliged to turn back. [2]
Shortly after his return to England, Cooper was appointed by the India Office to accompany the Panthay mission which had visited London to the frontier of Yunnan. On arriving at Rangoon, however, he learned that the rebellion had been crushed, and his mission was therefore at an end. Lord Northbrook appointed him political agent at Bhamo. Ill-health then obliged him to return almost immediately to England, where he was attached to the political department of the India Office. [2]
In 1876 Cooper was sent to India with despatches and presents to the viceroy in connection with the imperial durbar of Delhi, and was subsequently reappointed political agent at Bhamo. While there (1877) he welcomed William Gill, author of River of Golden Sand, after his journey through China. [2]
Cooper was murdered on 24 April 1878 at Bamo by a sepoy of his guard, over a grudge. [2]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Stephen, Leslie, ed. (1887). "Cooper, Thomas Thornville". Dictionary of National Biography . 12. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
The Burma campaign was a series of battles fought in the British colony of Burma. It was part of the South-East Asian theatre of World War II and primarily involved forces of the Allies; the British Empire and the Republic of China, with support from the United States. They faced against the invading forces of Imperial Japan, who were supported by the Thai Phayap Army, as well as two collaborationist independence movements and armies, the first being the Burma Independence Army, which spearheaded the initial attacks against the country. Puppet states were established in the conquered areas and territories were annexed, while the international Allied force in British India launched several failed offensives. During the later 1944 offensive into India and subsequent Allied recapture of Burma the Indian National Army, led by revolutionary Subhas C. Bose and his "Free India", were also fighting together with Japan. British Empire forces peaked at around 1,000,000 land and air forces, and were drawn primarily from British India, with British Army forces, 100,000 East and West African colonial troops, and smaller numbers of land and air forces from several other Dominions and Colonies.
The Ledo Road was an overland connection between India and China, built during World War II to enable the Western Allies to deliver supplies to China and aid the war effort against Japan. After the Japanese cut off the Burma Road in 1942 an alternative was required, hence the construction of the Ledo road. It was renamed the Stilwell Road, after General Joseph Stilwell of the U.S. Army, in early 1945 at the suggestion of Chiang Kai-shek. It passes through the Burmese towns of Shingbwiyang, Myitkyina and Bhamo in Kachin state. Of the 1,726 kilometres (1,072 mi) long road, 1,033 kilometres (642 mi) are in Burma and 632 kilometres (393 mi) in China with the remainder in India. The road had the Ledo-Pangsau Pass-Tanai (Danai)-Myitkyina--Bhamo-Mansi-Namhkam-Kunming route.
This article describes the history of Yunnan, currently a province of the People's Republic of China.
General William Mesny was an adventurer and writer born on the island of Jersey but spent most of his childhood in Alderney, the family home of the Mesnys. He was the eldest of three children of William Mesny and Mary Rachel Nicolle.
Burmese Chinese, also Sino-Burmese or Tayoke, are a group of overseas Chinese born or raised in Myanmar (Burma). Although the Chinese officially make up three percent of the population, the actual figure is believed to be much higher. Among the under-documented Chinese populations are: those of mixed background; those that have registered themselves as “ethnic Bamar” to avoid discrimination; those that moved to Myanmar from China during earlier Qing Dynasty because of Manchu rule; new Chinese immigrants and traders that have resided in Upper Myanmar since the 1990s but are not counted due to the lack of reliable census taking. As of 2012, the Burmese Chinese population is estimated to be at 1.6 to 3.0 million.
Operation Dracula was a World War II-airborne and amphibious attack on Rangoon by British and Anglo-Indian forces during the Burma Campaign.
Hkamti Long, also known as Khandigyi was a Shan state in what is today Burma. It was an outlying territory, located by the Mali River, north of Myitkyina District, away from the main Shan State area in present-day Kachin State. The main town was Putao.
Panthays form a group of Chinese Muslims in Burma. Some people refer to Panthays as the oldest group of Chinese Muslims in Burma. However, because of intermixing and cultural diffusion the Panthays are not as distinct a group as they once were.
Maurice Stewart Collis was an administrator in Burma (Myanmar) when it was part of the British Empire, and afterwards a writer on Southeast Asia, China and other historical subjects.
The Margary Affair was a crisis in Sino-British relations, which followed the murder of British official Augustus Raymond Margary in 1875.
Augustus Raymond Margary was a British diplomat and explorer. The murder of Margary and his entire staff, while surveying overland Asian trade routes, sparked the Margary Affair which led to the Chefoo Convention.
The Burma campaign in the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II was fought primarily by British Commonwealth, Chinese and United States forces against the forces of Imperial Japan, who were assisted to some degree by Thailand, the Burmese National Army and the Indian National Army. The British Commonwealth land forces were drawn primarily from the United Kingdom, British India and Africa.
The transport infrastructure of Yunnan is served by numerous transport modes, and forms an integral part of the structure Yunnan Province and the Southwest of China. Yunnan is served by several civilian airports and a major highway and rail network. The province is served by a network of bus routes that radiates from the capital city, Kunming.
The Third Anglo-Burmese War, also known as the Third Burma War, was a conflict that took place during 7–29 November 1885, with sporadic resistance and insurgency continuing into 1887. It was the final of three wars fought in the 19th century between the Burmese and the British. The war saw the loss of sovereignty of an independent Burma under the Konbaung dynasty, whose rule had already been reduced to the territory known as Upper Burma, the region of Lower Burma having been annexed by the British in 1853, as a result of the Second Anglo-Burmese War.
The Reverend George J. Geis was an American Baptist minister and anthropologist of German descent, best known for his missionary work in northeastern Burma. He promoted Christianity amongst the Kachin people, a group which he also studied, collecting general ethnographical data about them. He arrived in Burma with his wife in 1892, and spent most of the rest of his life there, establishing missions throughout Kachin State and Shan State. Geis is best known for his work in Myitkyina in Kachin State, but in the 1930s he established a mission in Kutkai in Shan State, and at the time of his death in 1936 was working there at the Kachin Bible Training School.
The Panthay rebellion (1856–1873), known to Chinese as the Du Wenxiu Rebellion, was a rebellion of the Muslim Hui people and other ethnic groups against the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty in southwestern Yunnan Province, as part of a wave of Hui-led multi-ethnic unrest.
Sir Edward Bosc Sladen was a British army officer who worked in India. He served as the organiser of provisional government in Upper Burma and oversaw the surrender of King Thibaw.
Panlong Subtownship is a subtownship of the Wa Self-Administered Division of Shan State, formerly and conterminously part of Hopang District.
The Wa States was the name formerly given to the Wa Land, the natural and historical region inhabited mainly by the Wa people, an ethnic group speaking an Austroasiatic language. The region is located to the northeast of the Shan States of British Burma, in the area of present-day Shan State of northern Burma (Myanmar) and the western zone of Pu'er Prefecture, Yunnan, China.
Captain William John Gill (10 September 1843 – 11 August 1882) was an English explorer and British army officer. He was born in Bangalore, India, the second child and elder son of the army officer, artist and photographer Major Robert Gill and his wife Frances Flowerdew Gill.
