A new colonial order
After the First Anglo-Burmese War, Arakan was ceded to British India under the 1826 Treaty of Yandabo. For most of the 19th and early 20th centuries it was administered as part of British Burma — itself a province of British India until 1937. Colonial rule brought railways, telegraphs, courts, and new patterns of land ownership, but also extractive taxation and the disruption of pre-colonial social structures.
Migration and labour
The British expanded rice cultivation across the Irrawaddy delta and parts of Arakan, creating intense demand for seasonal and permanent labour. Workers from Chittagong and wider Bengal — many of them Muslim — moved into Arakan as labourers, traders, and cultivators. Some settled; others returned home with each harvest.
These migrations did not "create" the Rohingya, who were already an established community in Arakan. But they did add to the diversity of the Muslim population and, crucially, became a key talking point for later nationalist narratives that recast all Muslims in Arakan as recent foreigners.
Communalism and politics
The 20th century saw the rise of Burmese nationalism, often defined in explicitly Buddhist and Burman terms. Anti-Muslim and anti-Indian riots erupted in Yangon (Rangoon) in 1938. In Arakan itself, communal tensions between Buddhist Rakhine and Muslim communities began to harden into the political divisions that would explode during the Second World War.
On the eve of independence
By 1947, Rohingya leaders were participating in conferences and discussions about Burma's political future. Some sought autonomy or even union with East Pakistan; others pursued recognition within the new Burmese state. The compromises reached in this period would shape — and ultimately constrain — Rohingya political rights for decades.