The Golden Letter of King Alaungpaya

In 1756, King Alaungpaya of Burma sent an extraordinary diplomatic letter to King George II of Great Britain and Hanover. The missive was engraved on a sheet of pure gold, studded with rubies, and rolled inside a hollowed elephant’s tusk for delivery. It carried a bold proposal of trade and alliance, but despite its impressive and costly packaging, the letter was met with neglect. King George II, preoccupied with continental conflicts as Elector of Hanover, gave it scant attention. The ornate golden sheet was treated as a curiosity rather than as state correspondence and was dispatched to the royal library in Hanover, where it remained for 250 years until its rediscovery in the early 2000s.

A section of the Golden Letter of King Alaungpaya. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

King Alaungpaya of Burma was one of the most influential rulers of his time in Southeast Asia. When he came to power in 1752, the once-mighty Toungoo dynasty had collapsed, and the country was fractured into competing states. Within a few years, Alaungpaya had brought much of Burma back under his control, founded a new capital, and established the Konbaung dynasty that would rule until British annexation more than a century later.

His reign, though brief, was marked by both conquest and vision. The king saw in European powers, particularly the British, opportunities for trade and technology. The British East India Company was already entrenched in India and eyeing Burma’s ports, while the French maintained influence in neighbouring regions. Alaungpaya, shrewdly aware of this balance, sought to open Burma’s doors to English traders under controlled terms.

Dated 7 May 1756, the “Golden Letter” was unlike any diplomatic correspondence sent before or since. Measuring about 55 centimetres in length and 12 centimetres in width, the sheet of pure gold was engraved with ten lines of Burmese script. The king’s seal, the mythical bird Hamsa, adorned its surface. Along both sides were mounted twenty-four rubies from the fabled mines of Mogok, twelve on each side in hexagonal settings.

Statue of Alaungpaya in Pyin Oo Lwin, Mynmar. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Golden Letter was addressed to King George II of Great Britain, a descendant of the House of Welf. As Elector of Hanover, George II ruled both Great Britain and the Electorate—later the Kingdom—of Hanover, a dual reign that lasted from 1714 to 1832. In his letter, King Alaungpaya granted permission for the British East India Company to establish a fortified trading post at the port of Pathein in southwestern Myanmar. At the time, the Company maintained a small settlement on Haingyi (then known as Negrais) Island in the Irrawaddy Delta, a location far from major trade routes and lacking proper infrastructure. The area was also notorious for its unhealthy climate. Alaungpaya’s offer was therefore a generous and strategic gesture, reflected in the magnificent craftsmanship of the letter itself. A trading post in Myanmar would have held considerable strategic value for the East India Company, which was then competing with the Compagnie française des Indes for colonial influence in the region. Such a base would also have secured vital supplies of teak, an essential timber for shipbuilding.

The Golden Letter and its container, a hollowed-out and ornamented elephant tusk. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Once engraved, the letter was wrapped in red paper, inserted into a cylindrical ivory case carved from an elephant’s tusk, and prepared for transport to the British court. Unfortunately, the Seven Years' War, which broke out in 1756, delayed the transit by two years. When it reached King George II, who was already preoccupied with war, he understood neither the contents nor the significance of the message, and therefore saw no reason to respond in a diplomatically measured manner. This initiative of the Burmese ruler was seen more as a curiosity, than as a serious political move by a less-powerful state. Alaungpaya not only received no reply to his offer, but had no acknowledgement that the letters had even arrived at their destinations.

The letter was dispatched to the royal library in Hanover for safekeeping, where it lay, miscatalogued as an Indian document written in Sanskrit. Librarians noted that it came from a “ruler who forbids the eating of living things”—an imaginative but inaccurate guess. For nearly 250 years—apart from an incident in 1768 when King Christian VII of Denmark unrolled the letter and caused a minor damage—the Burmese king’s words went unread.

It was only in the early 2000s that scholars identified the script as Burmese and recognised the letter’s true origin. The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library in Hanover, where it had been preserved, undertook conservation and digitisation work to stabilise the fragile sheet of gold.

In 2015, the letter was inscribed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register as a joint nomination by Myanmar, Germany and the United Kingdom—official recognition of its historical and cultural significance.

The Golden Letter at Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library, Hannover.

References:
# The Golden Letter from King Alaungphaya of Myanmar To King Georg II of Great Britain. The Treasure of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Library in Hanover, Germany
# Burma king’s gold letter deciphered after 250 years. The History Blog
# The Golden Letter of King Alaungpaya. Wikipedia