Michael W Charney
Michael Charney is a full professor at the SOAS, the University of London in the the School of History, Religions, and Philosophies and CISD, Politics, where he teaches of Asian, Contemporary, and Military History. He received his PhD from the University of Michigan in 1999 on the subject of the history of the emergence of religious communalism in Rakhine and has published a number of books on military history in Southeast Asia and the political and intellectual history of Myanmar. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Studies at the (National University of Singapore) where he researched religion and migration, was a project professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies of Asia at the University of Tokyo, and has spent most of the last two decades at SOAS, where he was elected to the Board of Trustees in 2016. He is a regular commentator in the media on events in Myanmar.
Charney has been an advocate for both meaningful democratic reforms in Myanmar as well as religious and ethnic tolerance. He has participated in a number of events and debriefing sessions since the events of August 2017 to speak on the historical presence of the Rohingya within Myanmar, the legitimacy of their ethnic claims, and the validity of claims of genocide. Charney is an outspoken critic of the use and abuse of history by authoritarian states, the Tatmadaw’s abuse of ethnic minorities, the National League for Democracy’s and former icon Aung San Suu Kyi’s failures in promoting civil liberties, and the so-called transition to Democracy in Myanmar.
My author's page at Amazon.com can be found here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Michael-W.-Charney/e/B001JOAS7Q/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1
Phone: 020 7898 4612
Address: Department of History
School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London
Thornhaugh Street,
Russell Square,
London WC1H 0XG
United Kingdom
Charney has been an advocate for both meaningful democratic reforms in Myanmar as well as religious and ethnic tolerance. He has participated in a number of events and debriefing sessions since the events of August 2017 to speak on the historical presence of the Rohingya within Myanmar, the legitimacy of their ethnic claims, and the validity of claims of genocide. Charney is an outspoken critic of the use and abuse of history by authoritarian states, the Tatmadaw’s abuse of ethnic minorities, the National League for Democracy’s and former icon Aung San Suu Kyi’s failures in promoting civil liberties, and the so-called transition to Democracy in Myanmar.
My author's page at Amazon.com can be found here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Michael-W.-Charney/e/B001JOAS7Q/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1
Phone: 020 7898 4612
Address: Department of History
School of Oriental and African Studies,
University of London
Thornhaugh Street,
Russell Square,
London WC1H 0XG
United Kingdom
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Michael W. Charney looks at the role of the railways in the First Burma Campaign to show how some kinds of military technology – as an example of imperial knowledge – faced resistance due to 1930s-era colonial insularity. The delay this caused significantly compromised the early defense of the colony when the Japanese invaded in 1942. Charney examines the efforts made by one engineer in particular to revive the railways and shows how this effort was responsible for the development of a truly imperial technology that was suitable for extra-European contexts and finally won acceptance in India.
Incorporating newly accessible primary source material from the files of the military Director of Transportation during the Campaign, this book highlights a hitherto unfilled gap in the archival record and explores an ignored but crucial aspect of the 1942 Japanese invasion of Burma.
Table of contents
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Metropolitan Transportation Technique from Britain to India and Iraq
2. Local, Colonial Railway Experience
3. A Colonial Railway in Wartime
4. Militarisation
5. Kings of the Road
6. The Technical Limits of Military Supply
7. Dark Territory and the Collapse of the Burma Defense
8. After the Campaign: India Learns from Burma
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Table of Contents
Michael W. Charney & Kathryn Wellen (eds.), Warring Societies of Pre-Colonial Southeast Asia: Local Cultures of Conflict Within a Regional Context (Copenhagen: NIAS, 2017).
Introduction 1
Michael W. Charney (SOAS) and Kathryn Wellen (KITLV)
Chapter 1: “Warfare and Depopulation of the Trans-Mekong Basin and the Revival of Siam’s Economy” 21
Puangthong R. Pawakapan (Chulalongkorn University)
Chapter 2: “La Maddukelleng and Civil War in South Sulawesi” 47
Kathryn Wellen (KITLV)
Chapter 3: “Kinship, Islam, and Raiding in Maguindanao, c. 1760–1780” 73
Ariel C. Lopez (Leiden University)
Chapter 4: “The Age of the Sea Falcons: Naval Warfare in Vietnam, 1771– 1802” 101
Vu Duc Liem (University of Hamburg)
Chapter 5: “Expansion and Internalization of Modes of Warfare in Pre-colonial Bali” 129
Hans Hägerdal (Linneaus University)
Chapter 6: “Armed Rural Folk: Elements of Pre-colonial Warfare in the Artistic Representations and Written Accounts of the Pacification Campaign (1886–1889) in Burma” 155
Michael W. Charney (SOAS)
Chapter 7: “Military Capability and the State in Southeast Asia’s Pacific Rimlands, 1500–1700” 183
Gerrit Knaap (Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands)
Bibliography 201
Index 223
Reviews (from publisher website):
"An excellent work that deals with the period from the annexation of Upper Burma by the British in 1886 until the devastation of Cyclone Nargis in 2008. The focus is on the period from the 1930s, as self-government was gained in 1937. Charney, Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at SOAS, is well-qualified to write this work and he offers a careful account, one that is particularly nuanced in its coverage of the civil conflict and totalitarianism of recent years. What would be welcome is a similar work by Charney on Burmese history as a whole." - The Historian
"This is an incredibly valuable history. In straightforward prose, Charney, a senior historian of pre-modern and modern Burma (Univ. of London), presents a thorough overview of Burmese history with a primary focus on the unfolding of events since independence in 1948.... Charney's narrative is clear, expeditious, and a great resource and reference for anyone interested in this period.... Essential." - Choice
"Those seeking a brisk, yet comprehensive, overview of the modern political history of this fascinating and complex country at last have an adequate reference book." - ASEAUK News
"Michael Charney's new book is a timely and very welcome contribution to the study of Burma or Myanmar. A History of Modern Burma is an accessible, well organized, and extensively researched account of Burma's recent past by one of today's leading scholars in the field. At a time of increasing international awareness of Burma, the book will be of interest not only to students and researchers but to anyone wanting to learn more about the country. Dr Charney offers a balanced and factual survey of modern Burmese history, drawing on his deep understanding of the country's past and a thorough knowledge of the existing literature." - Thant Myint-U
Unusually, this book has also been referenced by a Burmese poet. Link--http://kokothett.webs.com/poetrypost.htm
The catalyst for this reformation of indigenous thought was the rise of a small clique of Buddhist monks and lay people from the frontier to commanding positions in the state and monastic order over the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This clique had a major influence on the creation of state myths, the ways in which the throne ruled and presented itself, and, ultimately, the relationship between the throne and the state.
The new state and monastic orthodoxy, however, was challenged by other Burmese literati, who, over the course of the nineteenth century, sought in Western science, technology, and political theory other ways in which to shape Burmese perspectives on state and society. In the process, the Burmese underwent a difficult transition from premodern to modern intellectual thought, one that helped usher in British rule.
"A sophisticated, deeply original book that will shift the paradigms of precolonial Southeast Asian history. It breaks new ground in four major areas: It is the first intellectual history of any mainland Southeast Asian country prior to the colonial onslaught; it is the first study for any Southeast Asian country of the intersection between cultural change and politics; it is the first study of regionalism in national/imperial politics; and it is the first detailed study of the development of protonationalist thought in precolonial Southeast Asia. In sum, this is a major scholarly achievement."
--Victor B. Lieberman (the Marvin B. Becker Professor of Southeast Asian History, University of Michigan, author of Strange Parallels)
“Most studies of Burma’s Konbaung dynasty look at it through the British conquest of 1885. They seek to explain the ultimate failure of Burma’s last dynasty in terms of manpower, diplomacy or failure to modernize. Charney seldom mentions Britain, because his interest is in what Konbaung politics looked like from the inside. Was politics possible under kings who kept up the facade of absolute monarchy even as their real power was draining away? In order to answer this question, Charney takes his ground on the history of ideas… Charney’s subjects are authors and teachers, rather than battles and rebellions… These monks and ambitious ex-monks were the ‘Buddhist literati’ of Charney’s title. Taking his cue from Christopher Bayly’s work on India, he describes how pre-colonial Burma structured its information order. He offers an account of what the Burmese understood by ‘learning’; and he explains that it was a ‘powerful learning’ because under the Konbaung kings the outcome of intellectual disputes was bound up with the outcome of political struggles. Through intellectual history we can recover a political history. Charney is leading us in the right direction. To emphasize the intellectual approach is to downplay the religious, and there are more suggestive models, richer comparisons and deeper theory to be found in intellectual history than in comparative religion…”
--South East Asia Research
“This book represents an important contribution to the study of Burma’s early modern history. It highlights the role of monastic and lay literati in shaping the intellectual production of knowledge on Burmese kingship.. Western publications on precolonial Burma largely focus on historiography, kingship and state formation, monastic communities, and the relationship between the throne and monkhood…, but Michael W. Charney’s book is the first English-language work to examine Burmese history from the perspective of a group of intellectuals, whom he terms “Lower Chindwin literati.” The approach is a refreshing one for Burmese studies…studying the role played by monks and lay literati…This book’s merit lies in its use of Burmese-language sources, which present not only Burmese writers’ agendas and viewpoints but also provide intertextual context…Charney’s argument makes it clear that this particular group of literati played a central role in the promotion of the Konbaung kings in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.”
--American Historical Review
"Southeast Asian Warfare is well and engagingly written and offers the right combination of evidence and synthesis to give the reader a vivid impression of the perennial and changing patterns of warfare in the region. The extensive treatment of the inanimate and animate tools of war makes the battlefield come alive and significantly adds to our comparative knowledge... Southeast Asian Warfare is a major contribution to the previously neglected military history of this crossroads region. It is a highly useful reference work to be recommended for under- and postgraduate courses in Southeast Asian and comparative military history, and a stimulating and rich source for scholars working in these fields." Journal of Asian History
"Southeast Asian warfare before the colonial conquests has been elucidated by a considerable number of specialized studies in recent years. However, these texts have usually focused on specific countries within the region. No general study has been offered since ... 1952 ... Michael Charney’s book is therefore a welcome addition and summing-up of the subject." BIJDRAGEN TOT DE TAAL-, LAND- EN VOLKENKUNDE
"This book is a much needed and welcome contribution to the field...Southeast Asian warfare fills a recognisable gap in the literature on pre-colonial Southeast warfare. Its main contribution lies in gleaning and synthesising a large amount of information by classifying it into different categories, many of which were not broached by Wales. The integrative and regional approach adopted is also commendable...Southeast Asian warfare is an important book and should be read by anyone who is interested in Southeast Asian history." Journal of Southeast Asian Studies
Articles and Papers by Michael W Charney
Vol. 74, no. 3 (March issue)
Michael W. Charney looks at the role of the railways in the First Burma Campaign to show how some kinds of military technology – as an example of imperial knowledge – faced resistance due to 1930s-era colonial insularity. The delay this caused significantly compromised the early defense of the colony when the Japanese invaded in 1942. Charney examines the efforts made by one engineer in particular to revive the railways and shows how this effort was responsible for the development of a truly imperial technology that was suitable for extra-European contexts and finally won acceptance in India.
Incorporating newly accessible primary source material from the files of the military Director of Transportation during the Campaign, this book highlights a hitherto unfilled gap in the archival record and explores an ignored but crucial aspect of the 1942 Japanese invasion of Burma.
Table of contents
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Metropolitan Transportation Technique from Britain to India and Iraq
2. Local, Colonial Railway Experience
3. A Colonial Railway in Wartime
4. Militarisation
5. Kings of the Road
6. The Technical Limits of Military Supply
7. Dark Territory and the Collapse of the Burma Defense
8. After the Campaign: India Learns from Burma
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Table of Contents
Michael W. Charney & Kathryn Wellen (eds.), Warring Societies of Pre-Colonial Southeast Asia: Local Cultures of Conflict Within a Regional Context (Copenhagen: NIAS, 2017).
Introduction 1
Michael W. Charney (SOAS) and Kathryn Wellen (KITLV)
Chapter 1: “Warfare and Depopulation of the Trans-Mekong Basin and the Revival of Siam’s Economy” 21
Puangthong R. Pawakapan (Chulalongkorn University)
Chapter 2: “La Maddukelleng and Civil War in South Sulawesi” 47
Kathryn Wellen (KITLV)
Chapter 3: “Kinship, Islam, and Raiding in Maguindanao, c. 1760–1780” 73
Ariel C. Lopez (Leiden University)
Chapter 4: “The Age of the Sea Falcons: Naval Warfare in Vietnam, 1771– 1802” 101
Vu Duc Liem (University of Hamburg)
Chapter 5: “Expansion and Internalization of Modes of Warfare in Pre-colonial Bali” 129
Hans Hägerdal (Linneaus University)
Chapter 6: “Armed Rural Folk: Elements of Pre-colonial Warfare in the Artistic Representations and Written Accounts of the Pacification Campaign (1886–1889) in Burma” 155
Michael W. Charney (SOAS)
Chapter 7: “Military Capability and the State in Southeast Asia’s Pacific Rimlands, 1500–1700” 183
Gerrit Knaap (Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands)
Bibliography 201
Index 223
Reviews (from publisher website):
"An excellent work that deals with the period from the annexation of Upper Burma by the British in 1886 until the devastation of Cyclone Nargis in 2008. The focus is on the period from the 1930s, as self-government was gained in 1937. Charney, Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at SOAS, is well-qualified to write this work and he offers a careful account, one that is particularly nuanced in its coverage of the civil conflict and totalitarianism of recent years. What would be welcome is a similar work by Charney on Burmese history as a whole." - The Historian
"This is an incredibly valuable history. In straightforward prose, Charney, a senior historian of pre-modern and modern Burma (Univ. of London), presents a thorough overview of Burmese history with a primary focus on the unfolding of events since independence in 1948.... Charney's narrative is clear, expeditious, and a great resource and reference for anyone interested in this period.... Essential." - Choice
"Those seeking a brisk, yet comprehensive, overview of the modern political history of this fascinating and complex country at last have an adequate reference book." - ASEAUK News
"Michael Charney's new book is a timely and very welcome contribution to the study of Burma or Myanmar. A History of Modern Burma is an accessible, well organized, and extensively researched account of Burma's recent past by one of today's leading scholars in the field. At a time of increasing international awareness of Burma, the book will be of interest not only to students and researchers but to anyone wanting to learn more about the country. Dr Charney offers a balanced and factual survey of modern Burmese history, drawing on his deep understanding of the country's past and a thorough knowledge of the existing literature." - Thant Myint-U
Unusually, this book has also been referenced by a Burmese poet. Link--http://kokothett.webs.com/poetrypost.htm
The catalyst for this reformation of indigenous thought was the rise of a small clique of Buddhist monks and lay people from the frontier to commanding positions in the state and monastic order over the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This clique had a major influence on the creation of state myths, the ways in which the throne ruled and presented itself, and, ultimately, the relationship between the throne and the state.
The new state and monastic orthodoxy, however, was challenged by other Burmese literati, who, over the course of the nineteenth century, sought in Western science, technology, and political theory other ways in which to shape Burmese perspectives on state and society. In the process, the Burmese underwent a difficult transition from premodern to modern intellectual thought, one that helped usher in British rule.
"A sophisticated, deeply original book that will shift the paradigms of precolonial Southeast Asian history. It breaks new ground in four major areas: It is the first intellectual history of any mainland Southeast Asian country prior to the colonial onslaught; it is the first study for any Southeast Asian country of the intersection between cultural change and politics; it is the first study of regionalism in national/imperial politics; and it is the first detailed study of the development of protonationalist thought in precolonial Southeast Asia. In sum, this is a major scholarly achievement."
--Victor B. Lieberman (the Marvin B. Becker Professor of Southeast Asian History, University of Michigan, author of Strange Parallels)
“Most studies of Burma’s Konbaung dynasty look at it through the British conquest of 1885. They seek to explain the ultimate failure of Burma’s last dynasty in terms of manpower, diplomacy or failure to modernize. Charney seldom mentions Britain, because his interest is in what Konbaung politics looked like from the inside. Was politics possible under kings who kept up the facade of absolute monarchy even as their real power was draining away? In order to answer this question, Charney takes his ground on the history of ideas… Charney’s subjects are authors and teachers, rather than battles and rebellions… These monks and ambitious ex-monks were the ‘Buddhist literati’ of Charney’s title. Taking his cue from Christopher Bayly’s work on India, he describes how pre-colonial Burma structured its information order. He offers an account of what the Burmese understood by ‘learning’; and he explains that it was a ‘powerful learning’ because under the Konbaung kings the outcome of intellectual disputes was bound up with the outcome of political struggles. Through intellectual history we can recover a political history. Charney is leading us in the right direction. To emphasize the intellectual approach is to downplay the religious, and there are more suggestive models, richer comparisons and deeper theory to be found in intellectual history than in comparative religion…”
--South East Asia Research
“This book represents an important contribution to the study of Burma’s early modern history. It highlights the role of monastic and lay literati in shaping the intellectual production of knowledge on Burmese kingship.. Western publications on precolonial Burma largely focus on historiography, kingship and state formation, monastic communities, and the relationship between the throne and monkhood…, but Michael W. Charney’s book is the first English-language work to examine Burmese history from the perspective of a group of intellectuals, whom he terms “Lower Chindwin literati.” The approach is a refreshing one for Burmese studies…studying the role played by monks and lay literati…This book’s merit lies in its use of Burmese-language sources, which present not only Burmese writers’ agendas and viewpoints but also provide intertextual context…Charney’s argument makes it clear that this particular group of literati played a central role in the promotion of the Konbaung kings in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.”
--American Historical Review
"Southeast Asian Warfare is well and engagingly written and offers the right combination of evidence and synthesis to give the reader a vivid impression of the perennial and changing patterns of warfare in the region. The extensive treatment of the inanimate and animate tools of war makes the battlefield come alive and significantly adds to our comparative knowledge... Southeast Asian Warfare is a major contribution to the previously neglected military history of this crossroads region. It is a highly useful reference work to be recommended for under- and postgraduate courses in Southeast Asian and comparative military history, and a stimulating and rich source for scholars working in these fields." Journal of Asian History
"Southeast Asian warfare before the colonial conquests has been elucidated by a considerable number of specialized studies in recent years. However, these texts have usually focused on specific countries within the region. No general study has been offered since ... 1952 ... Michael Charney’s book is therefore a welcome addition and summing-up of the subject." BIJDRAGEN TOT DE TAAL-, LAND- EN VOLKENKUNDE
"This book is a much needed and welcome contribution to the field...Southeast Asian warfare fills a recognisable gap in the literature on pre-colonial Southeast warfare. Its main contribution lies in gleaning and synthesising a large amount of information by classifying it into different categories, many of which were not broached by Wales. The integrative and regional approach adopted is also commendable...Southeast Asian warfare is an important book and should be read by anyone who is interested in Southeast Asian history." Journal of Southeast Asian Studies
Vol. 74, no. 3 (March issue)
Interview with Professor Michael W. Charney, SOAS, the University of London, on the subject of the Rohingya made on 5 January 2018 8:40-8:50am GMT
[These notes were taken down by Professor Charney as he gave his interview, so they are a little incomplete, but an accurate record of the main questions and points]
Topics: Rohingyas, Ethnic Cleansing, Myanmar, Sanctions, Buddhist Communalism
Note: This is the draft of a paper that was written for presentation at the Euroseas Conference in 2004, but ultimately I did not attend. Much of the discussion in the paper wound up, in more polished and elaborated form, in my Powerful Learning book in 2006.
This module seeks to understand the phenomena and impact of war and collective violence in the non-Western world-to understand how violence emerges from particular historical circumstances and how it produces different consequences in different periods and geographical, cultural, ethnic, and even religious contexts.
The prolonged nature of the retreat both in terms of time and geographical space provided significant room for correspondents to shape the narrative about what had occurred. Nevertheless, most of the historiography on the campaign fixated on sometimes self-congratulatory military memoirs by some of the legends who emerged from the war in Burma, including British Field Marshal William Slim, whose Defeat into Victory (1956) has probably played the biggest role in shaping public opinion on the war in Burma, or on the official histories produced in Britain in the 1950s and the US Army (whose officers were also involved in this campaign, aiding China, and led by ‘Vinegar Joe’ Stillwell) shortly afterwards. The depiction of the civilian experience was largely the reserve of personal accounts that had little impact on the main historiography until a recent book by Michael Leigh, The Evacuation of Civilians from Burma (Bloomsbury, 2014), redirected attention to the role of the civilian evacuation officers and evacuees. Both military and civil administrative personnel involved in Burma at the time were highly critical of journalistic accounts. They were generally ignored as sensationalist, inaccurate, or self-serving. Woods, who mobilizes Wilfred Burchett’s characterisation of the journalistic accounts as the “first draft of history” (xvii-xx) as the object of his examination, shows otherwise. Instead, Woods demonstrates, journalists struggled with a great range of obstacles which hindered their ability to report events accurately, including everything from being prevented access to the front, to pressure from editors to get their story out as fast as possible, before their competitors, and the practical problems of knowing what was happening in the midst of a fast-moving retreat over a great area. Newsreel cameraman (Chapter 6) faced special constraints in this regard given the technical necessities of their coverage and sometimes requiring them to film re-enactments of actions or training activities they then passed off as real battle coverage (p. 89).
The book’s introduction, conclusion, and nine chapters exhaustively reveal the nuances of journalistic reporting during the campaign. The topics covered weave together points on which journalistic accounts intersect, such as depictions of the role played by the Governor of Burma, Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, in the retreat, and the context in which the journalists themselves arrived and worked. One of the more important topics that other researchers will want to pay particular attention to was the role of the Services Public Relations Organisation in January and February 1942 (Rangoon, the colonial capital, fell in the first week of March). This office played a significant role in censoring reporting on the campaign. Also of special interest will be the discussion of the publication of the account of one journalist, Alfred Wagg, as it was sympathetic to the civilian government’s role. The present volume is also one of the only studies of the retreat to focus attention on the role of women in any capacity. One area that may prove controversial is Woods’ assertion that journalistic claims of, Burmese fifth column activities during the campaign were not exaggerated as claimed by the colonial government (pp. 109-111). The evidence is somewhat more debatable than suggested here, whether or not most Burmese were in fact unwilling to support the British defense.
Woods convincingly shows that once the context in which the journalists reported the retreat is properly considered, their accounts do have significant value for historical research. This value might have been increased had most journalists accompanied the refugees on the trek out of Burma, although a small number (six) did so and have left extremely valuable accounts. As Woods observes in his conclusion, these “correspondents were not just onlookers but participants” in this campaign. (p. 146). Their accounts should thus be treated as primary source materials like other accounts and while caution should be exerted and context considered, this is no more the case with these accounts than any other kind of source material.
We are in the midst of a major turn in the historiography on the experience of World War II in South and Southeast Asia as attention shifts increasingly from military accounts of the battlefield to the civil administrative and civilian experiences of the fighting. Some of this work has been done on Singapore’s fall, including Ronald McCrum’s recent book on the civilian administration’s role in Singapore’s defense. Burma has been particularly important, however, in demonstrating the role that civilians played in the period and in shaping the global perceptions of events in this “forgotten” sector of World War II. The present volume has made an important contribution to this shift and will find a large audience not only in academia, but in the popular military history audience as well.
The book consists of eleven chapters, including the introduction, and the text is divided roughly evenly between the colonial and post-independence periods, with roughly 130 pages devoted to the post-1962 period of military rule and domination in the country. As such, the book impacts two historiographies, one colonial-focused and the other focused on the more difficult political ground of contemporary scholars, making more uncomfortable the separation of these two scholarships.
As with many nonwestern countries that surged out of colonialism in the twentieth century, historiography on Burma made a rapid transition from colonial-era scholarship and its blind acceptance of the improvements offered by western administration to indigenous nationalist historiography and its focus on the political activities of indigenous agents. Scholars of Burma for decades have been focused on questions of the emergence of the nation and nationalism. It is a fact that the degree to which adherence to the “government line” since 1962 has determined access to national archives and indeed to the country itself. It is thus no surprise that whole swathes of government economic institutions and commercial organizations, from the revenue office to banks, have been ignored or because information on them was considered to be too inaccessible to make serious study possible. This book is one of growing number of works that step outside of the crowd and offer some of the first significant attempts to come to grips with the historical roots of Burma’s contemporary impoverishment. Obviously, one might expect then that the data used for more recent periods of Burma’s history might be unavailable to the author. Nevertheless, Turnell adopts an appropriate (as clearly outlined in a special section in the introduction) methodology to circumvent these obstacles, making this perhaps the most reliable of recent works the present reviewer has read on the contemporary history of the country. The author has also decided not to include the pre-1824 period and for good reason, as secondary research on pre-colonial Burmese moneylending is not yet substantial enough to lend itself to forming an accurate picture, leaving space for some future economic historian to provide a worthy prequel to the present volume.
The relevance of Turnell’s study to any student of the country is best captured in the book’s opening two sentences: “At the dawn of the twentieth century Burma was the richest country in Southeast Asia. At the dawn of the twenty-first century it was the poorest” (p. 1). How, this radical upsetting of what should have been the natural order of things (Burma was at the beginning of this process blessed with the resources, level of education, and a strategic location to argue against anything but its lagging behind its neighbours). The answers rest in the intersections between politics and the economy. Turnell’s focus in this book is on financial institutions because they play a crucial role in national economic development and because in Burma they have played a peculiarly important role, taking centre stage in Burma’s modern history. The main foci of the colonial period include the Chettiar moneylenders who, despite their negative popular reputation in Burma and scapegoating in colonial reports, are refreshingly and more accurately recast as providers of a positive and necessary financial service to the poor cultivators in Burma who needed such help most. In one of the most interesting chapters, Turnell then turns to the introduction and expansion of the cooperative credit societies, on the German model(s) in rural Burma from 1904. Their rapid growth, Turnell shows, was not cut short by the World Trade Depression from 1928, but rather by 1927 as a result of retrenchment, when it was realized that the movement had grown too big, too fast, to protect itself from bad loans and corrupt practices. The last pre-war chapter looks at plans, which never reached fruition, to develop a Burma Bank, leaving Burma to depend even after 1937 upon the Imperial Bank of India for central bank services.
The failings of the colonial period were made dramatically worse from 1962. Admittedly, new laws after independence in 1948 began to hamper the activities of foreign banks in Burma and make Burma a less attractive place to do business for everyone, but the 1950s also saw the emergence of new indigenous banks that had the potential to develop into something very significant. Unfortunately, the coup of 1962 and the nationalization of banks that began in 1963 ushered in a period that has never really ended characterized by the eradication of general prosperity in favor of that of the military leadership. From this point, destabilizing government interventions, hunger for money, mismanagement and criminal activity (in the form of money laundering, for example), and the insecurity of money (frequent demonetizations being only one of several reasons for this) all contributed to the fragility of Burma’s financial sector. Ultimately, as Turnell sums up briefly and effectively in the afterword, Burma lacks a proper financial system, one necessary for national prosperity, symptoms of this being the absence of “reliable money” at all levels and the insecurity of property rights. The main reason for this is “the almost universally destructive role of the government” and its insatiable desire for cash, sustained in large part by huge budget deficits and borrowing, leading to inflation and kyat deflation (p. 353).
Fiery Dragons is our most focused and well-researched contribution to the study of Burma’s colonial and postcolonial financial institutions. In it, the grateful reader will uncover many of the answers as to why Burma has become Southeast Asia’s most impoverished backwater. Whether dressed in the white linen suits of colonial administrators or the rifle green uniforms of its post-1962 leadership, Burma’s political leadership has failed to set up the financial institutions fundamental to the proper functioning of a modern economy. This book is highly recommended for anyone who seeks to understand Burma and why it has lost the prosperity it enjoyed a century ago and for specialists on the country who have found the general literature not well versed into the hidden and very complicated, but highly relevant world of finance in Burma. Certainly, the book will find effective application in the postsecondary history, political science, and economics courses that cover the country.
This is a powerful, intellectual engagement with the extant archival sources on an unexamined, but crucially important area of the colonial state in Burma – its relationship and interactions with the general indigenous population. It also represents a new approach to the colonial state in Burma per se. Saha challenges the prevailing line of study of the colonial state in Burma, beginning with John Furnivall’s views of the emergence of colonial leviathan and taken through to very near the present by the study (and later the revised and updated edition) of the Burmese state by Robert Taylor, that views a rational, bureaucratic state in the colony, separate from society by the early twentieth century. This model, however much it fits the notions of ruler and ruled, allows no space to understand the complex ways that the state was experienced on an everyday basis (p. 7). Amongst these was the success of the colonial state in keeping women away from both the informal and formal resources of state power. Absent the women’s voice in its archive, Saha views the colonial state in Burma as a masculine one.
The book opens up two new avenues for further research. First, it would now be useful to learn more about the educational backgrounds of those who became subordinate officials in Burma. Saha gives us ample biographical data on individuals after they begin work for the colonial service, but nearly nothing on their training, education, or expectations of life under employment. Indeed, drawing upon Philip Abram, Saha stresses how much of colonial-state-making was a process of imagining and argues that there was a clear gap between the rational state imagined at the highest levels of the state and the utter absurdity of these notions at the level of everyday life (p. 8). By contrast, at the everyday level, subordinate officials were also engaged in another form of statemaking. Saha observing, building on Mitchell’s ideas of the “state effect,” that misconduct “was both a discourse for imagining the state and a set of practices through which the state was constituted.” (p. 10). Understanding more of the intellectual universe of these men will help us to understand this process better.
Second, it is arguable that the processes examined in Saha’s book may not be peculiarly colonial. As Saha explains, the upper echelons of the colonial state, with the high ideals of rational rule, were British who resided in the main towns of the colony (if we leave aside the intermediary metropole of Calcutta). The subordinate officials he sees as working out the colonial state on an everyday basis were Indians and Burmese in the smaller towns and villages. The idea of locals in country settings running their domains informally even until relatively recent decades is not an unfamiliar story in Europe. How much, then, can we see gap between the high ideals or officials and the everyday corruption of country officials as an urban-rural phenomenon in the making of states globally? Saha does hint at this issue, making the point that it was the “mixture of aloofness and acquiescence in informal British anti-corruption policy in Burma that was distinctively colonial” (p. 130). It might have been helpful to the reader if Saha, who examines colonial officialdom in Burma vertically, from the bottom to top (village headmen, township officers, deputy commissioners), had done comparisons vertically, perhaps pairing his case study of the Irrawaddy Division with one of the Rangoon municipality, comparing how Burmese officials performed in both places, what was expected of them, and how they imagined their own place in the colonial state. My guess is that we would see two very different kinds of subordinate-level Burmese officials.
This is an important, well-written, erudite, and novel approach to colonial Burmese history and the book achieves what it sets out to do. It is also timely, both for Burmese studies, which is enjoying a boost from recent political changes in the country, and for colonial studies, where law has tended to be viewed as a defining force for illegality, not a tool for corruption.
In Chapter 3, Holliday shows how Burmese overthrew Ne Win’s rule in 1988 only to see a new group of military leaders (protégés of the old man), restore military control through a coup a month after. From 1988 until just after the elections of 2010, it meant little to talk about the Burmese state separately from the tatmadaw, for “until 2011 [there was] no attempt made to give state structures some detachment from the military machine (p. 59). This resulted from what Holliday terms the military’s “scorched earth policy” including the abrogation of the 1974 Constitution and its “eliminat[ion] or coloniz[ation of] existing structures, and making everything subject to enhanced military control.” Holliday blames the colonial inheritance for this approach, suggesting that social and political programming by the British shaped the choices available, so “that when major challenges arose … leading figures forcefully reasserted state control and pointed the way to the dictatorship and deadlock of the junta years” (p. 80).
Internal reasons for the delays in the democratic transition (this reviewer has elsewhere labeled the past two decades of military review “perpetual delay”) are examined in Chapter 4. Some of the major underlying and complicating issues have been question of national reconciliation and avoidance of punishment for past crimes. Burma’s population is ethnically and religiously heterogeneous and many if not most of these groups took part in the civil war against the Burmese state (and essentially against the Burman majority) and, after the publication of Holliday’s book, we see a resumption of armed Kachin opposition to the state and the ethnic problems in Arakan between the Rakhaing and the Rohingya, both indigenous groups divided along religious communal lines. The questions of how ethnic groups will fit into the new Burma and how federalist the military was going to allow to future (now past) Constitution were the cause of major delays in reform. So to was the desire of the military to delay the democratization process long enough so that the question of punishment for past injustices (mainly perpetrated by the military) would become a moot issue –evidence for this concern comes from the impunity clauses for the military included in the 2008 Constitution (p. 96).
Holliday spends the remaining chapters examining the ways and results of various attempts by individuals, organizations, and countries to engage and intervene in Burma’s political problems with varying degrees of failure and success, since 1988. The United States, Japan, and ASEAN have been major forces at work in engaging with and attempting to secure changes within the country. Holliday devotes significant attention to the views and responses of Burma’s major opposition party (and winner of the 1990 elections), the NLD, which was strongly in favor of continued isolation until it had secured significant reforms from Burma’s military leadership. Holliday examines the ways in which the rest of the world is complicit in the injustices at work in Burma, how outside interests accepting the concept of global justice can engage with the country in its own political space, and what local views of the proper place of outside actors in Burma’s domestic political space are.
As Holliday notes in his conclusion, potentially one of the most significant transformations Burma is undergoing today is its reopening to contacts with the outside world after a half century of isolation and xenophobia. This phenomenon was introduced as cautious detachment by U Nu government in the 1950s, when Burma sought exclusion from the problems of the Cold War, and carried to the extreme in the forging of Ne Win’s “hermit state” from 1962 (p. 200). After Ne Win’s displacement, lopsided engagement with the outside world, substantial with Asian neighbors but limited with the Western world, delaying until now a rapid influx of western investment and ideas and ideological influences.
Where Burma will go now and who will determine the direction of change are bigger questions. Holliday argues that local people overwhelmingly want Burma to move in the “direction of democracy, and that implicit in that shift will be attempts to entrench inter-communal diversity and cross-cultural respect” (p. 200). While Burma may pursue large-scale reforms, the Burmese might also be satisfied in the short-term with the limited democracy afforded their Chinese neighbors by their Communist leadership. It will be the Burmese, Holliday insists, who make these choices, not outsiders. Certainly, there is more opportunity for the Burmese to attempt accomplish this. Although there is some reason to doubt the depth and longevity of the current spate of democratizing reforms, the rapid reopening of the country promises to release forces that even Burma’s careful military leadership could not foresee and will certainly be unable to control. Certainly, access to new communication and social networking had already been at work in this direction, producing a social revolution (p. 202) that is changing Burma’s urban landscape but also increasingly rural Burmese as well. Time it would seem has caught up to the Tatmadaw.
This is a timely, well-written, strongly researched, and erudite work, recommended for both specialists and the general reader interested in this country and the exciting transformations currently taking place.
This collection is highly recommended for researchers and students in Southeast Asian studies as a whole, as well as for comparativists interested in warfare or military institution building. The chapters are easily separable from the volume for assignment in courses focused on one particular Southeast Asian country or another, enhancing its applicability to undergraduate and postgraduate instruction. The careful reader will find in the volume substantial new data and insights that will likely enrich existing research agendas or open the doors to new ones.
On another level, the book is interesting as an example of the hobby interests of the original author, Prince Damrong (1862-1943), one of the chief architects of the modern Thai state and one of the most prominent Thai intellectuals of the twentieth century. A son of King Mongkut (r. 1851-1868), Prince Damrong played an important role in developing the administrative underpinnings of the court-dominated state, a role that led to his ten-year exile (1932-1942) from Thailand to the island of Penang (then part of the British Straits Settlements) after the 1932 coup ended royal absolutism. It was technically during this exile that Prince Damrong produced this book, but Prince Damrong’s fascination with, research on, and publications about Naresuan were already in place long before the coup. One of his most significant efforts, including substantial material on Naresuan, for example, saw published form in “Our Wars with the Burmese: Thai-Burmese Conflict 1539-1767,” serialized in the Journal of the Siam Society fifteen years earlier (and recently republished by White Lotus). Moreover, one year before his exile, Prince Damrong had overseen the production of wall paintings on Naresuan’s life at the Wat Suwandararam (these paintings are reproduced in a special section of the present book, pp. 167-183). The present study is certainly a window to Prince Damrong’s insights on the Thai past, but one that provides important glimpses at the complicated balance the man had to maintain between his administrative burdens and his passion for historical research, a tension made clear in occasional passages put forward rather bluntly in Prince Damrong’s own words (pp. 120-121). Adding to this particular element of the book, Prince Damrong’s intellectual contributions, the publishers have also issued an accompanying text, entitled The Writing of Prince Damrong Rajanubhad: A Chronology with Annotations, also compiled, annotated, and introduced by Breazeale.
With the study’s translation into English, the translator and editor Dr. Kennon Breazeale (East-West Center, Hawaii) provides another layer. Breazeale is a leading expert on early modern Thai and Lao history during the period and has produced several works on the subject. Most relevant here are an article by Breazeale, “A Transition in Historical Writing: The Works of Prince Damrong Rachanuphap,” published in the Journal of the Siam Society in 1971 (vol. 59, no. 2) and his translation of Prince Damrong’s Journey through Burma in 1936 (Bangkok: River Books, 1991). Beyond rendering the present study by Prince Damrong into English, Breazeale has included an introduction (pp. xvi-xvii) extensive historical notes (pp. 129-166) and the aforementioned section on the Wat Suwandararam wall paintings. The notes are well researched and provide necessary explanation where Prince Damrong did not. The old controversy regarding details of the manner of death of Burmese King Nandabayin’s (r. 1581-1599) crown prince who was in the midst of doing battle with Naresuan, for example, is discussed at length (pp. 149-150), identifying important sources contributing to the emergence of conflicting accounts, clearly marking out the trail for readers with further interest in the episode to follow. As a result, the value of the publication for researchers on Thai and Burmese history during the period has been increased substantially.
Finally, the volume offers both a study of warfare during the period and an example of the place of warfare in Thai intellectual history during Prince Damrong’s own lifetime. Prince Damrong’s eyes do not focus on the nitty-gritty of combat, but he does a fair job of showing us the role played by Naresuan (and thus by the elites generally) and his commanders in warfare. Some of the more interesting details are those regarding the strategy and tactics attributed by Prince Damrong to Naresuan in the latter’s successful defense of Ayudhya against Nandabayin in 1586-1587 (pp. 53-60). In Prince Damrong’s account of his own role in discovering the stupa that commemorated Naresuan’s combat on elephant back, provided in the present translation as a separate appendix (pp. 120-128), he notes that Naresuan followed an example included in the Sir Lankan chronicle, the Mahavamsa. Naresuan, in building the stupa, was consciously imitating the act of a Sinhalese king eighteen hundred years earlier after the latter’s victory over a Tamil invader (p. 125). Further, the images included in the appendix devoted to the Wat Suwandararam paintings reflect the vision of Prince Damrong’s own time of warfare centuries earlier, and not direct evidence of the conduct and technology of earlier warfare. Nevertheless, they provide us with evidence of how warfare was being re-imagined at that time just before Thailand moved toward the heightened militarism of the 1930s and early 1940s. The volume thus is a welcome contribution to a growing body of work on warfare in the region in the early modern period and its place in the intellectual history of twentieth century Thailand.
Presented in fluid, intelligently formulated prose, A Biography of King Naresuan the Great is recommended for both general audiences interested in Southeast Asian history and for specialists in the history of Thailand, Burma, and warfare in Southeast Asia generally. It should be of great interest even to those with access to earlier Thai-language versions of Prince Damrong’s work as the present edition offers much more that makes its reading indispensable to understanding the core study it has so admirably succeeded in translating for a broader audience.
The original account, in Italian, was published at Rome on the 6th of December 1510 at the request of Lodovico de Henricis da Corneto of Vicenza by Stephano Guillireti de Loreno and Hercule de Nani, both of Bologna. The translation followed here was made by John Winter Jones in 1863, edited by G. P. Badger, and published under the title of “The Itinerary of Ludovico di Varthema of Bologna from 1502 to 1508,” the same title we use in the text below.
Only material relevant to Burma has been included in the following text. Additional editorial changes include additional paragraph breaks and the addition of subject headers for clarification.
Various editions of Ralph Fitch’s account are available and the vary in the completeness of the account. The one followed here was published by Samuel Purchas in his Hakluytus Posthumus of Purchas His Pilgrimes under the title of “The Voyage of Master Ralph Fitch Merchant of London to Ormus, and so to Goa in the East India, to Cambaia, Ganges, Bengala; to Bacola, and Chonderi, to Pegu, to Jamahay in the Kingdome of Siam, and backe to Pegu, and from thence to Malacca, Zeilan, Cochin, and all the Coast of the East India: begun in the yeere of our Lord 1583 and ended 1591.”
Only those sections of the acocunt relevant to Pegu and Southeast Asia have been included. In several places, the proper name of places have been clarified within brackets. Macao, for example, refers to Makaw, the river portage where goods for Pegu were dropped off by merchants for land or small boat carriage to the city of Pegu. Other editorial changes have been limited to additional paragraph breaks and the addition of sections headers.
Fedrici was presumably a Venetian, from where he says he began his travels, and his account was originally published in Italian. The most complete version of his account published in English is the original publication of Thomas Hickok’s translation (london: Richard Jones, 18 June 1588), under the title of The Voyage and Travaile: Of M. Caesar Frederick, Merchant of Venice, Into the East India, the Indies, and Beyond, Wherein are Contained Very Pleasant and Rare Matters, With the Customes and Rites of Those Countries. Also, Herein are Discovered the Merchandises and Commodities of those Countreyes, aswell the Aboundance of Goulde and Silver, as Spices, Drugges, Pearles, and Other Jewelles. Fortunately, the British Library has a complete and clear copy of this early book. The Hickok translation is the translation used by later editors. However, one obstacle in making full use of Fedrici is the way in which his account was cut by different editors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and published in various extracts. Even the two earliest compilations that incorporated Hickock’s translation altered the text and unconsciously incoporated copyist’s errors. For example, those who questioned, as asserted by these later editions, whether Tenasserim did indeed supply nutmeg to the world market, will find that “nuts” in the Hickok original was transformed into “nutmeg.” The first of the two early republications is the first collection of travels edited by Richard Hakluyt. This was published in London in 1600 within the third volume of Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation made by sea or overland to the Remote and Farthest Distant quarters of the Earth at any time within the compass of these 1600 years (hereafter Voyages). The more commonly used version of Federici, however, is the later and shorter version edited by Samuel Purchas and published as “Extracts of Master Cæsar Fredericke his eighteene yeeres Indian Observations” in the Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes.(hereafter Hakluytus). Not only were Hakluyt’s errors repeated, more were added, and substantial sections of the account related to Burma were deleted.The account reproduced below attempts to provide as complete a version of Federici’s account of Pegu as possible, based on the Hakluyt and Purchas editions, but checked for major errors against the original Hickok translation. The text included below only includes the sections relevant to Burma and Southeast Asia, for information on trade in India and the Middle East, the reader is directed to the Voyages or Hakluytus Posthumus, or the Hickok original (the latter may be republished here in a later issue).
“Our Author proceedeth In large discourses of this Countrie, and the occurrents of that time, which (so much as is necessary) we have in some of our other Peguan Relators, Frederike, Fitch, or the Jesuites, and are therefore here omitted.”
In the autumn of 1838, Mr. Kincaid being desirous to return to his labors at Ava at the earliest favorable period, his place at Mergui was supplied by Mr. Ingalls, who had been designated as a permanent occupant of that station. Mr. Ingalls arrived at Mergui on the 29th of October, accompanied by three assistants.
M. W. C.
This was edited by the SBBR 3.2 Autumn 2005 issue by Michael Charney.
It will be necessary, by way of Introduction, to mention that it having been determined to withdraw the settlement at Negrais except three or four people to take care of the teak timbers that had been collected there, and to secure the right of possession, in case it might afterwards be thought proper to resettle at that place. Captain Newton proceeded accordingly to Bengal, where he arrived 14th of May 1759, with thirty-five Europeans, and seventy black people. On 30th of July 1759. The administration at Bengal, thought proper to accept of Captain William Henry Southby’s offer to go to Negrais, to take care of the teak timbers, and accordingly dispatched the Victoria Snow, Captain Walter Alves, to carry Mr. Southby to the Negrais. Captain Alves returned to Bengal in November, and gave the following account of the Settlement at Negrais, being cut off.
The papers concerning Negrais, and Captain Alve’s Embassy to Ava [previous issue of the SBBR], with the letters that passed on that occasion, were communicated by my much lamented friend, the late Lord Pigot...
Alexander Dalrymple (1791)
Ediyed for the SBBR 3.2 (Autumn 2005) by Michael Charney
stop undocumented migrants is not the best way to solve Covid-19. We need to think globally, we need to be more inclusive, and we need to act collectively if we are going to beat Covid-19. Better protections for forcibly displaced migrants and undocumented migrants is really an important part of this collective process.
The prevailing literature regarding Arakanese history accepts uncritically a primordialist view of an ever-present Buddhist religious identity in Arakan from the pre-fifteenth century, that this religious identity was the chief means of collective action by Arakanese throughout the early modern period, and that it always involved social exclusion of Muslims. After examining Burmese-language palm-leaf manuscripts from collections in Burma and the British Library, royal orders and court treatises, and contemporaneous Portuguese and other foreign accounts, I concluded that these assumptions are incorrect. Burmese Buddhist communalism was clearly a phenomenon of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and generally did not define group action in preceding centuries.
This dissertation makes two inter-related arguments. First, the Burmese Buddhist religious identity developed from a complex array of influences. Ecological, climatological, social, economic, and political factors all played important roles in determining the direction of and response to religious developments. Thus, Theravada Buddhism was not the ancient and monolithic religious identity that some have interpreted it to be. Rather, the Buddhist religious identity as it has emerged today developed gradually, and primarily from the end of the eighteenth and into the nineteenth centuries, during the periods of Burman and British rule. This was true also of the Arakanese Muslim identity. Second, Burmese-Buddhist communalism developed out of competition between Muslims and Buddhists for new agricultural lands and attempts to survive on shrinking land plots in the British colonial economy. British colonial authorities also reduced the vitality of patron-client relationships which meant the emergence of religious leaders as organizers of rural communities for collective action.
Entries in this work are written by a team of international, interdisciplinary scholars from fields including history, geography, literature, architecture, urban planning, gender studies, linguistics, anthropology and more. All the contributions have been peer-reviewed and are written in an accessible style for readers new to the field. The work includes some 50 illustrations and 75 maps. The entries cover the full range of individual empires, from the Assyrians of the ancient Near East to the Zapotecs of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and from the Asante Kingdom of West Africa to the Dutch East Indian empire. Attention is also given to the ideas that shaped the imperial experience, and to diverse, comparative themes such from environment and slavery to law and weaponry. The work also includes a detailed introduction by John Mackenzie drawing many of the themes and theoretical approaches of empire together.
The study of the overseas Chinese has by now become a global enterprise, raising new theoretical problems and empirical challenges. New case studies of overseas Chinese, such as those on communities in North America, Cuba, India, and South Africa, continually unveil different perspectives. New kinds of transnational connectivities linking Chinese communities are also being identified. It is now possible to make broader generalizations of a Chinese diaspora, on a global basis. Further, the intensifying study of the overseas Chinese has stimulated renewed intellectual vigor in other areas of research. The transnational and transregional activities of overseas Chinese, for example, pose serious challenges to analytical concepts of regional divides such as that between East and Southeast Asia.
Despite the increased attention, new data, and the changing theoretical paradigms, basic questions concerning the overseas Chinese remain. The papers in this volume seek to understand the overseas Chinese migrants not just in terms of the overall Chinese diaspora per se, but also local Chinese migrants adapting to local societies, in different national contexts.