Tourism was introduced to Burma in the period of ‘high colonialism’ of Southeast
Asia (1870-1940). In 1865, the British government decommissioned a fleet of four
steamers and three cargo boats, which had been in service on the Irrawaddy since
the annexation of Lower Burma to British India in the early 1850s. A Glaswegian entrepreneur
bought the fleet, refitted the boats and set up an upmarket river transport
business called The Irrawaddy Flotilla Company Limited (IFC). It was onboard
the IFC steamer Thooriya, that Burma’s dethroned King Thibaw and the royal family
were sent off into their exile in India after the fall of Mandalay in 1885. It was the
IFC’s Beloo, onboard which the Prince Edward travelled up the same river to Mandalay
in 1889.11 At its peak in the 1920s, when thousands of Dutch tourists were flocking
to Bali, the IFC with 600 vessels carrying 9 million passengers a year was the
largest riverboat company in the world. During the Second World War, as the Japanese
and Burmese nationalist armies advanced into the country, the retreating British
scuttled all vessels of the IFC fleet, 200 in Mandalay alone. The company was restored
when the British re-occupied the country in 1945. Upon Burma’s independence
in 1948, the IFC was handed over to the Government Inland Water Transport
Board of the ‘Union of Burma.’