{{Short description|British soldier and diplomat (1792–1845)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=September 2021}} {{Infobox writer | name = Henry Burney | pseudonym = | image = | birth_place = English | birth_date = {{birth date|1792|2|27|df=y}} | death_place = Calcutta, India | death_date = {{death date and age|1845|3|4|1792|2|27|df=y}} | birth_name = | spouse = Janet Bannerman | children = 13 | occupation = diplomat | nationality = English | language = English }}
'''Henry Burney''' (27 February 1792 – 4 March 1845),<ref name=obituary>Holmes and Co. (Calcutta), [https://books.google.com/books?id=T-HwSiLns14C&pg=PA209 ''The Bengal Obituary''], W. Thacker, 1851, p. 209</ref> was a British army officer and diplomat for the British East India Company.
== Early life == His parents were Richard Thomas Burney, headmaster of the Orphan School at Kidderpore near Calcutta, and Jane Burney.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=T-HwSiLns14C&pg=PA208 ''The Bengal Obituary''], W. Thacker, 1851, p. 208</ref> He was a nephew of the English writer Frances Burney.
==Career== In 1807 Burney joined the East India Company. In 1818, he was promoted to lieutenant and appointed as an adjutant of the 20th Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry, Penang's acting town-major and military secretary to Governor Bannerman.<ref name="genealogy" /> Later he worked as an agent of the East India Company, collecting material about Burma and Siam, which he made available to England, while participating in the First Anglo–Burmese War (1823–1826). After his 1825 appointment as political emissary to Siam<ref name="genealogy" /> he met King Rama III there the following year, concluding the Burney Treaty and a commercial contract to stimulate development of regional trade between Siam and Europe. Having negotiated a mutually agreed border between Siam and British-occupied Burma, only the exact course of the border at Three Pagodas Pass in Kanchanaburi remained in dispute.<ref name="First Residency"/>
From 1829 Burney was the British resident at King Bagyidaw's court in Ava (the then capital of Burma), where he successfully resolved the dispute over the Kabaw Valley in Burma's favour.<ref name="First Residency"> Hall, D. G. E. (1950) "Chapter XIII: The First Residency and the Annexation of Pegu (1826–1855)" [http://mission.itu.ch/MISSIONS/Myanmar/Burma/bur_history.pdf ''Burma''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050519230755/http://mission.itu.ch/MISSIONS/Myanmar/Burma/bur_history.pdf |date=19 May 2005 }} Hutchinson University Library, London, p. 108, {{OCLC|513262}} </ref>
By 1834 he had risen to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel<ref name="genealogy" /> in the Bengal army.{{sfnp|Hall, Henry Burney|1974}}{{page needed|date=August 2023}}
==Personal life== Henry Burney married Janet Bannerman (1799–1865),<ref name="genealogy">[https://www.mit.edu/~dfm/genealogy/bannerman.html "Descendants of James Bannerman"] — genealogy</ref> the niece of the governor John Alexander Bannerman of Penang,<ref name="genealogy" /> at George Town (Penang, Malaya) in 1818. The couple had 13 children, eight of whom were living in 1845 when Henry Burney died.<ref name="b209">[https://books.google.com/books?id=T-HwSiLns14C&pg=PA209 ''The Bengal Obituary''], p. 209</ref>
Henry Burney died at sea in 1845 while on his way from Rangoon on sick leave.{{sfnp|Hall, British Writers of Burmese History|1961|loc=p. 261, note 27}} He was buried in Mission Burial Ground on Park Street in Calcutta.<ref name="b209" />
==References== {{Reflist}}
==Bibliography== * {{citation |first=D. G. E. |last=Hall |chapter=British Writers of Burmese History from Dalrymple to Bayfield |editor=D. G. E. Hall |title=Historians of South East Asia |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=London |year=1961 |pages=255–266 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/historicalwritin02univ/page/254 |via=archive.org |ref={{sfnref|Hall, British Writers of Burmese History|1961}}}} * {{citation |last=Hall |first=D. G. E. |title=Henry Burney – A Biography |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1974 |url=https://archive.org/details/henryburneypolit0000hall |via=archive.org |ref={{sfnref|Hall, Henry Burney|1974}}}}
==See also== *Henry Burney. ''The journal of Henry Burney in the capital of Burma, 1830-1832,'' Univ. of Auckland, 1995, 121 pp. ({{ISBN|0908689500}}) *D.G.E. Hall, ''Henry Burney: A Political Biography'', Oxford Univ. Press, 1974, 330 pp. ({{ISBN|0197135838}}) *D.G.E. Hall, ''Burney's Comments on the Court of Ava'', London, 1957, 314 pp. *Holmes and Co. (Calcutta), ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=T-HwSiLns14C&pg=PA209 The Bengal Obituary]: Or, a Record to Perpetuate the Memory of Departed Worth: Being a Compilation of Tablets and Monumental Inscriptions from Various Parts of the Bengal and Agra Presidencies, to which is added Biographical Sketches and Memoirs of Such as have Pre-Eminently Distinguished Themselves in the History of British India, Since the Formation of the European Settlement to the Present Time'', London: 1851, W. Thacker, pp. 208–9
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Burney, Henry}} Category:1792 births Category:1845 deaths Category:British East India Company Army officers Category:Diplomats for British India