According to Arthur Purves Phayre, a report by the Royal Geographical Society in November 1882 included a paper by one Colonel Yule who discussed the oldest records of a sea route to China from the Middle East.

Yule identified Arakan with the country of "Argyre" which means The Land of Silver or Silverland mentioned by the Greco-Roman geographer Claudius Ptolemy.

[12] Arakanese traditional history holds that Arakan was inhabited by the Rakhine since 3000 BCE, but there is no archaeological evidence to support the claim.

[13]: 17  According to British historian Daniel George Edward Hall, who wrote extensively on the history of Burma, "The Burmese do not seem to have settled in Arakan until possibly as late as the tenth century AD.

[17] According to Pamela Gutman, "Arakan was ruled by kings who adopted Indian titles and traditions to suit their own environment.

[18] Gutman writes that “the maintenance of a state appropriate to kingship required the ministrations of increasing numbers of craftsmen and artisans, the most skilled of whom were often accommodated within the royal compound.

Material defences – walls and moats protecting the palace and the city – were constructed and the city-state, the nagara, evolved.

These transformations saw the tribal chieftain replaced by a divine king, shaman by brahmin priest, tribesman as cultivators by peasants, tribesmen as warriors by an army, and favoured the development of occupational specialisation.

This process can clearly be traced in Arakan, which received Indian culture by land from Bengal and by sea from other parts of India”.

[18] Due to the evidence of Sanskrit inscriptions found in the region, historians believe the founders of the first Arakanese state were Indian.

[26] An academic consensus prevails that Min Saw Mun returned to Arakan, regained the throne and shifted the capital from Laungyet to Mrauk-U (erstwhile Mrohaung).

Bengali literary texts and coinage are among the chief primary sources to detail the history of Arakan during the Mrauk-U period.

In the accounts of foreign travelers like Fray Sebastian Manrique and Bengali members of the Arakanese court, the kings are referred with their Muslim titles.

They included Muslim traders from the Indian Ocean trade network and Sufi missionaries who established themselves along the coasts of Arakan.

The hill chiefs of northern and southern Arakan provided troops who were ethnic Thet, Mrung, Chin, or from other small minority groups.

Taking advantage of the Mughal Empire's invasion campaign of Bengal, the Arakan navy and pirates dominated a coastline of 1000 miles, spanning from the Sundarbans to Moulmein.

[13]: 22  The Burmese Empire executed thousands of men and deported a considerable portion of people from the Arakanese population to central Burma.

The religious relics of the kingdom, including the sacred Mahamuni sculpture of Buddha, were seized and transferred to Amarapura in Mandalay.

Many Rakhine Buddhists fled by sea to the Barisal region of Bengal, where their descendants continue to live today.

As one of the earliest regions to be conquered by the British, Arakan saw the removal of export restrictions imposed by the Burmese Empire.

[42] Akyab (now Sittwe), the divisional capital of Arakan, was located in proximity to the Chittagong Division of British Bengal.

Transforming forests and barren land into paddy fields offered the potential of generating revenue by taxing rice farmers.

Akyab had shipping links with the ports of Bengal, including Calcutta, Chittagong, Narayanganj, Goalundo and Dacca.

By the 20th century, Akyab enjoyed shipping links with Europe, Malaya, China, Ceylon and the Dutch East Indies.

British Burma, with its expanding and low cost rice production, provided a lucrative alternative to the United States.

The arrival of leading European banking and shipping companies in Burma propelled the rice trade into the single most important cash crop sector of the Burmese economy.

The colonial government encouraged Chittagonian migration as part of its policy to expand the rice economy in Arakan.

Settlers included not only Muslims and Hindus from Chittagong; but also returning Buddhist refugees who were displaced by earlier wars.

In the 1940s, Arakanese Muslims appealed to Muhammad Ali Jinnah to incorporate the townships of the Mayu River valley into the Dominion of Pakistan.

Other languages spoken by smaller communities in Rakhine state include the Tibeto-Burman people of Chak, Asho Chin, Ekai, Kumi, Laitu, Mru, Songlai, Sumtu, Uppu and Chakma.