Customer Reviews

The Making of Modern Burma

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I really enjoyed this book. I'm familiar with Asian history, and have read bits and pieces about Burma, most recently various articles in the press about the political situtation there today. But this book, as the first 'new history' of the country in a long time, forces us to think about Burma today in a very different light. What it does most of all is open up Burma's almost unknown recent past, the 'kingdom' of Burma that was lost a hundred years ago, and then examines the ways in which that loss has been felt ever since. Far from being an isolated hermit kingdom, Burma in the nineteenth century was an ambitious, modernizing state. The mystery of why the British then sought not only to annex this state but to turn it upside down, is a central theme of this book. Also, its full of great stories and anecdotes for anyone interested in British colonial history. I hope this book will help educate people who are concerned about the troubles in that country, but dont really have the historical background to really analyse the situation properly. If you're worried that it will be too academic, its not, its a fairly easy and often entertaining read.

This is a good history and the author obviously knows his stuff. The author's access to British records is exemplary and his knowledge of local sources and tradition is excellent. One problem - he does not see Burma's imperial domination of its neighbors as in any way problematic, while Britain's imperialism obviously is. This is contradictory and typically Burmese. If one is to look for sources of current problems, certainly Britain's inmperial rule is one of them, but so is Burma's refusal to acknowledge that it practiced - and continues to practice - the same sorts of policies over other militarily weaker peoples.

This is a good history book. It provides the reader with a fairly broad background history of Burma (describing 'traditional' (ie 18th and early 19th century) society, culture, religion, politics, etc) , then narrates in a straight forward way what the author describes as the country formative transition to the modern world - the nineteenth and early centuries, when the region which we now know as Burma was created and annexed to the British Indian empire.

Its not only about Burma though - it also about how(as the author explains in his conclusions many medium sized non-western country, which remained independent until late in the nineteenth century, tried desperately to 'modernize'(Siam, Persia, Egypt are other obvious examples) and failed - and the consequences of this failure, which in Burma's case, echos still today

It also has lots of amusing stories, annecdotes etc. Its fairly focused however on its key theme, and one wishes at times for a better view of what was going on in the Shan states and other parts of what become 'modern Burma'.

Its a good read if youre interested in either Asian or British colonial history.

Very interesting concise history of Konboung Dynesty'd last days. The author did explore the in depth and wrote in a perspective usually failed to look into. As a knower of Burmese history and culture, I appreciate the Author's work very much.

Historian Thant Myint-U has probably become more famous for his popular history of Burma The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma. However, I think The Making of Modern Burma is far more important by a long-shot. This is a more academic work, but it contains several key insights. The most important message is that, unlike many other colonial relationships in Southeast Asia, in 1886 the British essentially destroyed all of Burma's precolonial institutions. Before colonization, Burma had a fairly strong state (at least in the central part of the country). With independence, Burma lacked any institutions or sense of nation to fall back upon - no king or similar rallying point. The book focuses on the 19th century, but this is history that will change the way you look at the country today. It really is about the making of modern Burma.