Lt. Joseph Moore

Following Burmese incursions into British held territory to include the successful invasion of Assam, the Governor General of India declared war on Burma in February 1824. The British sent an expedition of 11,000 men under Maj General Archibald Campbell and ships under Captain Frederick Marryat. Providing a visual record from the departure of Campbell's invasion force until shortly after the capture of Rangoon, this superb series of aquatints were after drawings made "on the spot" by Lieutenant Joseph Moore of the 89th Regiment; a second series of six plates by Marrayat was published the following year.

Moore’s aquatints are the first large-scale, coloured views of Burma and beautifully express the dichotomy between picturesque idylls and the realities of war. The First Anglo-Burmese War of 1824-26 was to be the most expensive campaign in British Indian history and subsequently would lead to a severe economic crisis there in 1833. At the Treaty of Yandabo (1826) the Burmese ceded to the British large areas in the east to include Manipur, Assam and regions from the Salween River to the Bengal Sea in addition to accepting crippling indemnity payments. This was the beginning of the end of Burma’s independence; two further wars with the British followed and the country was completely annexed in 1886.