Formerly, a mostly agrarian society, except for a period of a little over 200 years, from the mid-16th until the

mid-18th century, during which it hosted the largest, wealthiest, and militarily strongest

empire in Southeast Asia.

The Kanbong Empire, the country that is today called Myanmar, but which, from most of recent history, until the name was

changed in 1989, was called Burma, was conquered by the British, after a very expensive

in wealth and human lives, series of conflicts that is today collectively referred to as the

Anglo-Burmese Wars. Just after that especially dominant era for the Konbong Empire, the British began expanding into the region,

and these two expansionist nations experienced frictions in what was then British East Indian Company territory.

These regions at that point were fairly badly defined.

There was a lot of travel and rule across borders, and both troops and refugees regularly

flooded from one claimed region into the other, resulting in a lot of false alarms and

almost battles. Eventually though, from 1824 until 1826, the first of three

primary conflicts was fought with a British East Indian Company victory. The second main conflict

lasted from 1852 until 1878 and stemmed from issues with the treaty that had been signed between these

two forces after the previous war.

And though the Burmese tried to make nice, the British seemed intent on taking some particularly

appealing land with some very valuable resources that was in the neighboring territory.

So they forced the issue, won the war, and annexed even more formerly Burmese land,

which sparked a revolution in Burma, knocking the then-king out of power.

The third main conflict in this series of conflicts lasted less than a month

in November of 1885, and occurred right as Burma was trying to modernize their military

and infrastructure in the hope of holding the British back in future potential incursions.

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