Rakhine State
(2002 est. pop. 3.0 million). Rakhine (formerly Arakan) State is located in western Myanmar (Burma), bounded by Bangladesh to the northwest; Chin State to the north; the Irrawaddy, Magwe, and Pegu Divisions to the east; and the Bay of Bengal to the west and the south. Rakhine State has an area of 36,778 square kilometers (14,200 square miles). The capital and chief port is Sittwe (formerly known as Akyab), located at the mouth of the Kaladan River. Rakhine's other chief towns include Kyaukpyu and Sandoway. Rakhine's main rivers include the Kaladan, the Mayu, and the Lemro. Rakhine State's economy chiefly depends on wet-rice agriculture.
Generally, the residents of Rakhine State speak Burmese, although many also speak Bengali or other languages. The population consists mainly of the Arakanese and the Rohingyas, although the current anti-Muslim policies of the regime make it difficult to ascertain the exact percentage of their overall representation in the population. Smaller ethnic groups include the Burmans and the Chins. The majority of Arakanese are Buddhists, while the Rohingyas are mostly Muslims.
The Arakan Yoma mountain range has kept the Burmese-speaking peoples of Rakhine and the Irrawaddy Valley politically and sometimes culturally divided. The existence of a low population base and extensive reserves of fertile land has had two effects on the history of Rakhine State. First, the former Arakanese kingdoms were raiding states; that is, they depended for their prosperity on captive labor groups drawn from Bengal in the north and hill tribes and Burmese from the east. In order to do so, the Arakanese kings built powerful fleets and armies, strengthened by hired mercenaries from India and, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Portugal. Second, when the British acquired Arakan from the Burmese after the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–1826), attempts to develop a colonial export economy focused here on rice and led to the opening of settlements by thousands of Muslim Bengali agriculturalists, highlighting an Islamization of Rakhine that has led to communal opposition by some Arakanese Buddhists.
Despite Arakan's early economic promise—for a brief period in the 1840s and 1850s Sittwe (Akyab), Arakan's capital, was the world's largest rice-exporting port—the British acquisition of Lower Burma and the port of Rangoon (Yangon) as a result of the Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852) led to Arakan's economic stagnation in the shadow of prosperous Lower Burma.
The Arakanese have indicated desires for autonomy from the Burmese government from the beginning of the independence period (from 1948 to the present). Under the military government, however, anti-Muslim repression has encouraged feelings of solidarity between Rakhine's Buddhist majority and the staunchly Buddhist military regime, confusing the lines of political and religious communal loyalties.
Further Reading
Charney, Michael W. (2000) "A Reinvestigation of Konbaung-era Burman Historiography on the Relationship between Arakan and Ava (Upper Burma)." Journal of Asian History 34, 1: 53–68.
Harvey, G. E. ([1925] 1967) History of Burma: From the Earliest Times to 10 March 1824. The Beginning of the English Conquest. Reprint ed. London: Frank Cass.
Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma. (1987) Rakhine: 1983 Population Census. Rangoon, Burma: Government of Burma, Immigration and Manpower Department.
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