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Yangon, the capital city is the main gateway to Myanmar. Evergreen and cool with lush tropical trees, shady parks and beautiful lakes, Yangon has earned the name of the Garden City of the East. Yangon was founded by King Alaungpaya on the site of a small village called Dagon when he conquered Lower Myanmar in 1755. The name Yangon means "End of Strife" which was anglicized to Rangoon. The present day Yangon covers over 350
sq.km. and has a population of over 5 million. |
HISTORY
In 1755, King Alaungpaya (the founder of Kon-Baung Dynasty) accomplished
his military campaign to reunite the whole of Myanmar, following his
conquest of Dagon. At that time, Dagon was no more than a village or a
small town. The King realized that the conquest of Dagon implied a total
victory over Lower Myanmar because of its strategic location.
Accordingly, he renamed the town Yangon that literally means end of
strife. Afterward, the town went by the name of Yangon for nearly a
century. In 1851, however, the British annexation of Yangon resulted in
getting the town refounded. And the name also was changed t Rangoon. Since
then, the city has been designated as the capital of Myanmar and known of
the world as Rangoon. The new city was modeled and constructed by
Lieutenant Fraser, a British Officer of the Engineering Corps who, it was
believed, also designed and constructed Singapore. The city was laid out
on a chessboard pattern with wide roads running North to South and East to
West.
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