Yangon, also romanized in English as Rangoon, is the capital city of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar. Yangon was the capital city of Myanmar until 2005 and served as such until 2006, when the military government relocated the administrative functions to the purpose-built capital city of Naypyidaw in north central Myanmar. With over five million people, Yangon is Myanmar's most populous city and its most important commercial centre.
Yangon boasts the largest number of colonial-era buildings in Southeast Asia, and has a unique colonial-era urban core that is remarkably intact. The colonial-era commercial core is centred around the Sule Pagoda, which is reputed to be over 2,000 years old. The city is also home to the gilded Shwedagon Pagoda – Myanmar's most sacred and famous Buddhist pagoda.
Yangon suffers from profoundly inadequate infrastructure, especially compared to other major cities in Southeast Asia, such as Jakarta, Bangkok or Hanoi. Rail transport is particularly lacking. Though many historic residential and commercial buildings have been renovated throughout central Yangon, most satellite towns that ring the city remain chronically impoverished and lack basic infrastructure.
Etymology and pronunciation
The name Yangon (ရန်ကုန်) is derived from the combination of the Burmese words yan (ရန်) and koun (ကုန်), which mean 'enemies' and 'run out of', respectively. This word combination can be translated as 'End of Strife'.
The name is pronounced yang-GON in British English and yahn-GOHN in American English.
The English romanisation, Rangoon, is based on the Rakhine dialect, and pronounced rang-GOON in English.
History
Early history
Yangon was founded as Dagon in the early 11th century (c. 1028–1043) by the Mon people, who inhabited Lower Burma at that time. Dagon became an important pilgrimage pagoda town, starting in the 14th century, during the Hanthawaddy kingdom. Notable governors of Dagon included Princess Maha Dewi, who ruled the town from 1364 to 1392, and her grandniece, Shin Saw Pu, who later became the only female queen regnant in Burmese history. Queen Saw Pu built a palace next to the Shwedagon Pagoda in the town in 1460 and spent her semi-retired life at that palace until she died in 1471.
In 1755, King Alaungpaya, the founder of the Konbaung dynasty, captured Dagon, added settlements around it, and called the enlarged town "Yangon". In the 1790s, the East India Company opened a factory in Yangon. The estimated population of Yangon in 1823 was about 30,000. The British captured Yangon during the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–26), but returned the city to Burmese rule after the war. The city was destroyed by a fire in 1841.
Colonial Rangoon (1852–1948)
The British captured Yangon and all of Lower Burma in the Second Anglo-Burmese War of 1852, and subsequently transformed Yangon into the commercial and political hub of British Burma. After the war, the British moved the capital of British Burma from Moulmein (present-day Mawlamyine) to Yangon. Based on the design by army engineer Lt. Alexander Fraser, the British constructed a new city on a grid plan on delta land, bounded to the east by the Pazundaung Creek and to the south and west by the Yangon River. Yangon became the capital of all British-ruled Burma after the British had captured Upper Burma in the Third Anglo-Burmese War of 1885. By the 1890s, Yangon's growing population and commerce gave birth to prosperous residential suburbs to the north of Royal Lake (Kandawgyi) and Inya Lake. The British also established hospitals including Rangoon General Hospital and colleges including Rangoon University.
After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British sent Bahadur Shah II, the last Mughal emperor, to Yangon to live in exile.
Colonial Yangon, with its spacious parks and lakes and mix of modern buildings and traditional wooden architecture, was known as "the garden city of the East". By the early 20th century, Yangon had public services and infrastructure on par with London.
Before World War II, about 55% of Yangon's population of 500,000 was Indian or South Asian, and only about a third was Bamar (Burman). Karens, Chinese, Anglo-Burmese, and others made up the rest.
After World War I, Yangon became the center of the Burmese independence movement, with leftist Rangoon University students leading the way. Three nationwide strikes against British rule in 1920, 1936, and 1938, led by April lin Htet all began in Yangon. Yangon was under Japanese occupation (1942–45), and incurred heavy damage during World War II. The city was retaken by the Allies in May 1945. Yangon became the capital of the Union of Burma on 4 January 1948 when the country gained independence from British rule.
Contemporary Yangon (1948–present)
Soon after Burma's independence in 1948, many colonial-era names of streets and parks were changed to more nationalistic Burmese names. In 1989, the military junta changed the city's English name to "Yangon", along with many other changes in English transliteration of Burmese names. (The changes have not been accepted by many Burmese who consider the junta unfit to make such changes, nor by many publications and news bureaus, including, most notably, the BBC and foreign nations including the United Kingdom and the United States.)
Since independence, Yangon has expanded outwards. Successive governments have built satellite towns such as Thaketa, North Okkalapa and South Okkalapa in the 1950s to Hlaingthaya, Shwepyitha and South Dagon in the 1980s. Today, Greater Yangon encompasses an area covering nearly 600 square kilometres (230 sq mi).
During Ne Win's isolationist rule (1962–88), Yangon's infrastructure deteriorated through poor maintenance and did not keep up with its growing population. In the 1990s, the military government's more open market policies attracted domestic and foreign investment, bringing a modicum of modernity to the city's infrastructure. Some inner city residents were forcibly relocated to new satellite towns. Many colonial-period buildings were demolished to make way for high-rise hotels, office buildings, and shopping malls, leading the city government to place about 200 notable colonial-period buildings under the Yangon City Heritage List in 1996. Major building programs resulted in six new bridges and five new highways linking the city to its industrial back country. Still, much of Yangon remains without basic municipal services such as 24-hour electricity and regular garbage collection.
Yangon has become much more indigenous Burmese in its ethnic makeup since independence. After independence, many South Asians and Anglo-Burmese left. Many more South Asians were forced to leave during the 1960s by Ne Win's xenophobic government. Nevertheless, sizeable South Asian and Chinese communities still exist in Yangon. The Anglo-Burmese have effectively disappeared, having left the country or intermarried with other Burmese groups.
Yangon was the centre of major anti-government protests in 1974, 1988 and 2007. In particular, the 8888 Uprising resulted in the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Burmese civilians, many of them in Yangoon, where hundreds of thousands of people flooded into the streets of the former capital city. The Saffron Revolution saw mass shootings and the use of crematoria in Yangon by the Burmese government to erase evidence of their crimes against monks, unarmed protesters, journalists and students.
The city's streets saw bloodshed each time as protesters were gunned down by the government, most notably during the 1988, 2007, and 2021 mass protests, all of which were started in Yangon itself, signifying its importance as the cultural centre of Burma.
In May 2008, Cyclone Nargis hit Yangon. While the city had few human casualties, three-quarters of Yangon's industrial infrastructure was destroyed or damaged, with losses estimated at US$800 million.
In November 2005, the military government designated Naypyidaw, 320 kilometres (199 mi) north of Yangon, as the new administrative capital, and moved much of the government to the newly developed city. Yangon remains the largest city and the most important commercial, economic and cultural center of Myanmar. On 7 May 2005, a series of coordinated bombings occurred in the city of Yangon, Myanmar. Eleven people were killed in the attack, and one of the 162 people that were injured was a member of the LCMS mission team to Myanmar.
In the 2020s, life in Yangon was greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and 2021 coup d'état. The city was the location of mass protests in response to the coup. The pandemic and protests prompted the authorities to enforce a series of lockdowns and curfews. The city's economy subsequently slowed.
Geography
Yangon is located in Lower Burma (Myanmar) at the convergence of the Yangon and Bago Rivers about 30 km (19 mi) away from the Gulf of Martaban at 16°48' North, 96°09' East (16.8, 96.15). Its standard time zone is UTC/GMT +6:30 hours.
It is located 23 metres above sea level. Due to its location on the Irrawaddy Delta, intertidal flat ecosystems occur adjacent to the city.
Climate
Yangon has a tropical monsoon climate (Am) under the Köppen climate classification system. The city features a lengthy wet season from May through October where a substantial amount of rainfall is received; and a dry season from November through April, where little rainfall is seen. It is primarily due to the heavy rainfall received during the rainy season that makes Yangon fall under the tropical monsoon climate category. From 1961 to the 1990s, average temperatures show little variance, with average highs ranging from 29 to 36 °C (84 to 97 °F) and average lows ranging from 18 to 25 °C (64 to 77 °F).
Yangon is prone to tropical cyclones. In 2008, Cyclone Nargis made landfall as a Category 4 cyclone, making it the worst cyclone on record in the country.
Cityscape
Until the mid-1990s, Yangon remained largely constrained to its traditional peninsula setting between the Bago, Yangon, and Hlaing Rivers. People moved in, but little of the city moved out. Maps from 1944 show little development north of Inya Lake and areas that are now layered in cement and stacked with houses were then virtual backwaters. In the late 1980s, however, the city began a rapid spread north to where Yangon International Airport is located. But the result is a stretching tail on the city, with the downtown area well removed from its geographic centre. The city's area has steadily increased from 72.52 square kilometres (28.00 sq mi) in 1901 to 86.2 square kilometres (33.3 sq mi) in 1940 to 208.51 square kilometres (80.51 sq mi) in 1974, to 346.13 square kilometres (133.64 sq mi) in 1985, and to 598.75 square kilometres (231.18 sq mi) in 2008.
Architecture
Downtown Yangon is known for its leafy avenues and fin-de-siècle architecture. The former British colonial capital has the highest number of colonial period buildings in south-east Asia. Downtown Yangon is still mainly made up of decaying colonial buildings. The former High Court, the former Secretariat buildings, the former St. Paul's English High School and the Strand Hotel are excellent examples of the bygone era. Most downtown buildings from this era are four-story mix-use (residential and commercial) buildings with 14-foot (4.3 m) ceilings, allowing for the construction of mezzanines. Despite their less-than-perfect conditions, the buildings remain highly sought after and most expensive in the city's property market.
In 1996, the Yangon City Development Committee created a Yangon City Heritage List of old buildings and structures in the city that cannot be modified or torn down without approval. In 2012, the city of Yangon imposed a 50-year moratorium on demolition of buildings older than 50 years. The Yangon Heritage Trust, an NGO started by Thant Myint-U, aims to create heritage areas in Downtown, and attract investors to renovate buildings for commercial use.
A latter-day hallmark of Yangon is the eight-story apartment building. (In Yangon parlance, a building with no elevators (lifts) is called an apartment building and one with elevators is called a condominium. Condos which have to invest in a local power generator to ensure 24-hour electricity for the elevators are beyond the reach of most Yangonites.) Found throughout the city, eight-story apartment buildings provide inexpensive housing for many Yangonites. The apartments are usually eight stories high (including the ground floor) mainly because city regulations, until February 2008, required that all buildings higher than 75 feet (23 m) or eight stories to install lifts. The code calls for elevators in buildings higher than 62 feet (19 m) or six stories, likely ushering in the era of the six-story apartment building. Although most apartment buildings were built only within the last 20 years, they look much older and rundown due to shoddy construction and lack of proper maintenance.