1 August 1923
Early Burmese Business Delegation
This photograph shows a Burmese business delegation in London, boarding a Handley Page W8 biplane airliner of the British Home Air Service for a flight to Birmingham, 1 August 1923. This was at the very start of the period of "dyarchy" government, when Burma was still a province of India, but when it also began to take some very small moves towards representative government, with its first elections (1922), first legislature (in the old Secretariat), and first Burmese ministers.
Business in the 1920s was good. It was a golden era for the economy, with big profits from rice and teak. Rangoon was a modern cosmopolitan port, and immigration (from India) at its peak (1928). Then it all came crashing down, with the Great Depression and the precipitous fall in global commodity prices (1930) which led to skyrocketing unemployment, bankruptcies, land alienation, then communal riots (1938 in Rangoon), the rise of fascism and communism, and finally war (1941) and independence (1948).