History of Myanmar's labour movement (p21/505)

This post presents page 21 of The History of the Myanmar Labour Movement by Thakin Lwin (Bagan Books, 1968).

Vocabulary:

အစဉ်အလာ ။ convention, tradition
ကြုံကြိုက် ။ meet or happen by chance
အလားတူ ။ similarly
စက်ကွင်း ။ ambit
ကုန်ကြမ်း ။ raw material
ကုန်ချော ။ finished product, end product
ချယ်လှယ် ။
သယံဇာတ ။ natural resources
နယ်နိမိတ် ။ boundary, frontier of a state or territory
သက်သက် ။ deliberately
အကောင်အထည် ။ body structure, visible form
သိမ်းပိုက် ။ confiscate
ရန်စ ။ to provoke
ကျူးကျော် ။ to trespass, invade, make incursions

Translation:

Chapter 2

Colonial rule

If we look back at Myanmar's history, there was a long tradition of Myanmar and the Myanmar people being an independent country and people for about 2000 years. Myanmar is a small country in Southeast Asia and a part of the world.

At that time as the world's capitalist system transformed into an imperialist capitalist system, just as British colonial life was arriving in India, which was a neighbour on the west side of Myanmar, so too the French imperialists' colonial life was arriving in Indochina, which was on the east side [of Myanmar]. Simultaneously, at the start of the 19th century Myanmar entered the ambit of the focus of the British imperialists and the contemporary French imperialists.

The capitalist imperialists' primary intentions were 1) exploiting profits by getting raw materials cheaply and easily, 2) getting profits by exporting finished products to new markets, 3) exploiting profits by opening new industrial works and hiring the cheapest labourers, 4) seeking profits by investing capital and extracting subterranean natural resources, and 5) to be able to open new basic military camps for the expansion of the colonial frontier. All [of these goals] deliberately exploited the colonial peoples who were taken over and made into slaves.

In practice the form of these imperial goals was, starting from end of the 18th century, the British imperialists firstly annexed India as a base camp and then in accordance with their opportunity, which was more than that of the other imperialists, they gradually established colonial life [in Myanmar] through provocative invasion.

In 1885, after the The British imperialists annexed the whole of Myanmar, they made it a part of India...