George Orwell's Burma: Three Essays on the Decay of Empire

before George Orwell was George Orwell he was Eric Arthur Blair a nineteen year old man sailing to Burma on the SS he

referred to join the Indian Imperial police he stayed there until he was 24 in 1927 when he contracted dengue fever

and returned to England Burmese days for world's first novel after down and out in Paris and London

was published in 1934 but at around the same time he wrote three essays that together given invaluable impression of

an empire in demise and a clear and personal author in a sent in 1928 Orwell travelled to Paris and set out to become

a writer he wrote how a nation is exploited the British Empire in Burma in 1929 for the progressive journal the

progress a week in it he described Burma how it's the source of five percent of the world's oil how Britain took over

the country between 1820 and 1888 and he described the despotic techniques of British rule the great maxim being never

get something done by a European when an oriental can do it he describes hi Burma's Parliament like each Parliament

of the Indian provinces is merely a show of democracy with very little power he concedes that the building of roads

canals hospitals and schools benefit the Burmese but are still built in the interest of Britain what enables 12,000

men to subdue a population of 40 million years leaving them in peace to cultivate their

fields and educating them only enough as for the needs of the Empire as education equals rebellion and while the Burmese

do not notice the British extract from the mines and the oil worlds and the paddy fields while the resources are

plentiful and and here was the trick to Empire the British allows specialized British machine made products to be

exported from Britain freely while discouraging specialization of production in the colonies by keeping

customs tariffs prohibitively high so that the colonies supply low-cost simple products and foods to the homeland this

short essay gives an incredibly striking impression of Empire in such fewer words and two years later in 1931 all world

roads are hanging for the London Journal via Delfy an essay that adds another more personalised angle to his Imperial

attitude in it he recounts in meticulous detail the hanging of a Hindu man condemned for a crime not defined

it's a sodden morning of the rains as they're walking towards the gallows a dreadful thing had happened a dog come

goodness knows whence had appeared in the yard it came bounding among us with a loud volley of barks and lept around

us wagging its whole body wild with glee at finding so many human beings together as they continue or

the prisoner stats lightly a site to avoid a puddle on the path it is curious he says but till that moment I had never

realized what it means to destroy a healthy conscious man when I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle

I saw the mystery the unspeakable wrongness of cutting a life short when it's in full tide this man was not dying

he was alive just as we were alive all the organs of his body were working bowels digesting food skin renewing

itself nails growing tissues forming all toiling away in solemn of foolery but in two minutes with a sudden snap one of us

would be gone one mind less one world less once the noose was fixed the prisoner began crying out on his god it

was a high reiterated cry of RAAM RAAM RAAM RAAM not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help and steady

rhythm a cool almost like the tolling of a bow suddenly the superintendent made up his mind throwing his head he made a

swift motion with his stick Charlo he shouted almost fiercely there was a clanking noise and then dead silence

the prisoner had vanished and the rope was twisting on itself I let go of the dog can it galloped immediately to the

back of the gallows but when it got there it stopped short barked and then retreated into a corner of the yard

where it stood among the weeds looking timorously out at us the Eurasian boy walking beside me

nodded towards the way we had come with a knowing smile do you know sir our friend he meant the dead man when he

heard his appeal have been dismissed he pissed on the floor of his cell from freights

kindly take one of my cigarettes do you not admire my new silver case sir from the box wallah 2 rupees 8 Anna's classy

European style I found that I was laughing quite loudly everyone was laughing even the superintendent grinned

in a tolerant way you better all come out and have a drink he said quite genial 'hey i've got a bottle of whisky

in the car we could do with it we all had a drink together native and European alike quite amicably the dead man was a

hundred yards away [Music] three years later all well-published

burmese days a tale of the decline of empire and the hopeless endeavors of a European in Burma John Flory the

despondent tone of Burmese days was condensed by Orwell in the 1936 essay shooting an elephant an indispensable

metaphor for the slow laboured death of the British Empire the essay opens aphoristic Lee in more Maine in lower

Burma all world rights I was hated by large numbers of people the only time in my life that I have

been important enough for this to happen to me all well was a police officer in the time but had already decided that

imperialism was an evil thing and was looking to leave Burma one day he writes something happened which in a roundabout

way was enlightening it was a tiny incident in itself but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of

the real nature of imperialism Orwell had received a phone call to tell him that a tamed elephant had gone crazy and

was ravaging a bazaar the Burmese had no weapons and Orwell grabbed a rifle not large nut to kill it but loud enough to

scare it and made off once there he found that the elephant had already killed a man never tell me Orwell

interjects that the dead look peaceful most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish as an excited crowd gathered

around the European with the gun Orwell was told that the elephant was just a few hundred yards away in a paddy

field the crowd started shouting excitedly that all well was going to shoot the

elephant it was a bit of fun to them he writes as it would be to an English crowd besides they wanted the meat

it made me vaguely uneasy I had no intention of shooting the elephant I have merely sent for the rifle to defend

myself if necessary and it is always unnerving to have a crowd following you when the crowd found the elephants he

took not the slightest notice of the crowds approach he was tearing up bunches of grass beating them against

his knees to clean them and stuffing them into his mouth as soon as I saw the elephant's he says I knew with perfect

certainty that I ought not to shoot him it is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant it is comparable to

destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery and obviously one ought not to do it if it can be possibly avoided but

Orwell looked at the crowd which have grown to the thousands looking on the magic rifle like a conjurer about to

perform a trick they expected it of him it was at this moment he writes as I stood there with the rifle in my hands

that I first grasped the hollowness the futility of the white man's Dominion in the east here was I the white man with

his gun standing in front of the unarmed native crowd seemingly the leading actor but in reality I was only an absurd

puppet pushed to and fro by the will of these yellow faces behind I perceived in this moment that when the white man

turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys he becomes a sort of hollow posing dummy the conventionalized figure

of a Sahib for it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the natives and so in

every crisis he has got to do what the natives expect of him he wears a mask and his face grows to fit it I had got

to shoot the elephant but he continues he didn't want to shoot the elephants at all and a compromise came to him he

would walk close to the elephant to test his mood then if threatened he could shoot and if not he'd have an excuse to

leave him but he says the sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those 2,000 Berman's would see me

pursued calls trampled on and reduced with grinning corpse and if that happened it was quite probable that some

of them would laugh that would never do and so all well decides he must shoot the elephant he lies on the road to get

a better rein the crowd grew very still and a deep low happy sigh as a people who see the theatre curtain go on the

last breathe from innumerable throats when I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick one never does

when a shot goes home but I heard the devilish roar of Glee that went up from the crowd the elephant liked better

Cline of the British Empire neither stirred nor fan but every line of his body had altered

he looked suddenly stricken shrunken immensely old as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralyzed him

without knocking him bang Orwell fires again he trumpeted for the first and only time and then dying he

came his belly towards me when the crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay I waited a long time for him

to die but his breathing did not weaken finally I fired my two remaining shots into the spots where I thought his heart

must be the thick blood world out of him like red velvet but still he did not die his body did an even jerk when the shots

hit him the tortured breathing continued without a pause he was dying very slowly and in great agony but in some world

remote through me where not even a bullet could damage him further it felt that I had got to put an end to that

dreadful noise it seemed dreadful to see the great beast lying there powerless to move yet powerless to dive and not even

able to finish him I sent back for my small rifle and poured shot after shot into his heart and down his throat

they seemed to make no impression the tortured gasps continued as steadily as the ticking of a clock all well retains

that he couldn't stand the elephant's agony so he laughed later he discovered it had

taken the elephants an hour and a half to die and the essay ends with a blunt human

truth I often wondered he writes whether any of the others had grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking like a

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