Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/442

390 first campaign undertaken by Anglo-Indian troops on the Asiatic continent beyond India. It ascended the course of the Irawadi; and the Burmese, after an obstinate defence, were compelled to submit to England's terms. This was a war that produced important and far-reaching consequences for Great Britain, because it carried our arms for the first time beyond the Indian frontier, extended our dominion into a totally different country, and subjected new Asiatic races to our sovereignty. The annexation of Arakan and the Tenasserim provinces placed in English hands almost all that part of the coast which fronts India across the Bay of Bengal, except the maritime province of Pegu, which includes the mouths of the Irawadi River, and which was not annexed until after the war of 1852; and it also threw Burma back over the watershed of the mountain range that runs parallel to this part of the sea-line.

We had now brought a large population, different from the Indians in origin, manners, language, and religion, within the jurisdiction of the Indian empire, and the expansive and levelling forces of European power had been set travelling in a fresh direction upon another line where we were destined to encounter just so much resistance as would compel us to advance by the mere act of overcoming it. A secondary but important consequence of the defeat of the Burmese was their recognition of our protectorate over upper Assam, Cachar, and Manipur, the tract beyond Bengal and along the Brahmaputra River which is now incorporated within