BAKER, Thomas Turner.

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The Recent Operations of the British Forces at Rangoon and Martaban. First edition, describing the military action immediately preceding the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Burmese War and the annexation of Lower Burma. Two folding panoramas show the city and the dramatic scene of British ships being attacked by the Dunnoo Stockade.Thomas Turner Baker was the chaplain aboard HMS Fox, one of the ships sent under Commodore George Lambert - described by Lord Dalhousie as the "combustible commodore" (quoted in Marshall, p. 234) - to blockade Rangoon and enforce the terms of the 1826 Treaty of Yandabo. Before the blockade, Lambert had already seized the flagship of King Pagan Min, inflaming the fragile situation. When British requests for reparations were refused, Dalhousie authorized a full-scale military expedition to bring the Burmese to heel.Compiled anonymously, the text is based on animated despatches sent by Baker up to March 1852, one month before his death from cholera. Copies are found with the frontispiece hand-coloured or uncoloured.

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