Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency since 1948 [Paperback]

Bertil Lintner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2000

In 1948 Burma was a promising young democracy with a bustling free-market economy and a standard of living that surpassed nearly all of its Asian neighbors. Fifty years later, Burma is one of the poorest nations in the world, with a military dictatorship in Rangoon and 50,000 armed rebels from a myriad of ethnic insurgency groups. In this well-documented and detailed account, journalist Bertil Lintner explains the connection between Burma's booming drug production and its insurgency and counter-insurgency, providing an answer to the question of why Burma has been unable to shake off 35 years of military rule and build a modern, democratic society. This revised and updated edition includes a list of acronyms, a chronology of events, a who's who of important figures in Burma's insurgency, an annotated list of rebel armies, and biographical sketches of the Thirty Comrades.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 604 pages
• Publisher: Silkworm Books; 2 edition (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9747100789
• ISBN-13: 978-9747100785
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,867,305 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Disclosing the hidden plots and tricky deals inside Burma, September 19, 2000

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Marco Del Corona - See all my reviews

This review is from: Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency since 1948 (Paperback)

The reader who have appreciated Lintner's maybe most famous work, Land of Jade (the description of a journey through insurgency-held areas in Burma around mid 80s), cannot miss this volume. Under the surface of an extremeley documentated essay, it's a pleasant and instructive work, reccomended to the concerned traveller and to the scholar, to the journalist and to the reader fond of adventure stories. The books shows the connections between the legitimate aspirations of autonomy of ethnic minorities of Burma and the strategies to get them, the collapse of the dream of a real Union of Burma with full rights for every people of that country, the rationale which lies behind opium production and its exploitation by Rangoon military. The search for profit on the behalf of the military regime chose the simpliest way: divide the minorities and get rich. Never mind if the easiest "gold" of Burma has been proved to be opium and drug trade, never mind if the result is the disgregation of pristine ethnic and social structures, the death of thousands people... Lintner is a specialist of Burma with a strong sympathy for the sufferings of common human beings of Burma, and this attitude is a plus-value for the book. And the glossary of organizations, parties, armies and leaders are an essential and rare resource for whoever studies or follows Burmese affairs.