Important Burma Map showing English data

Sidney Hall, 1829 :
Birmah, with part of Anam and Siam. Excellent. Original color. 16.5 x 20 inches. $285.

This detailed map records Burma during its transition to a British colony, published three years after the British conquest. Hall locates a striking number of places along the Irrawaddy River north through Mandalay (Amarapura), with considerable detail even far north of Mandalay, evidencing the degree to which the British had by this time penetrated Burma. British maps of the river as far as Mandalay had improved markedly as a result of a surveyor by the name of Lieutenant Woods, who accompanied a British embassy to Ava in 1795 under Captain Michael Symes. The river journey to Mandalay had become well-known to British expansionists, since Burmas reluctance to grant them lavish trading privileges brought them repeatedly to the then-capital.

The land to the east of Burma is for the most part still mysterious on the Hall map. In the mountains of the Burma-Siamese border there is a section marked off as Extensive Hilly Tract occupied by the Karaen. Hall is refering to the Karen people, one of the so-called hill tribe people who live in the western and northern mountains of Thailand and its frontier with Burma (see fig. 131). Of these groups, the Karen may have lived in the mountains of western Thailand (at this time still Lan Na) for hundreds of years, while the Hmong, Akha, Lisu, Yao, and others began settling in northern Thailand from Burma and Laos circa 1880. Although the Karen are rarely mentioned on maps, they were known by Europeans since the sixteenth century. Cames, repeating heresay, described the Karens, savage tribes inhabiting the remoter hills who eat the flesh of their enemies and cruelly tattoo their own with red-hot irons, perhaps associating them with the feared Gueos.