| |||||||||||||||
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
One star or less -,
This review is from: The State in Burma (Hardcover)
Why?Because Taylor considers the bigger the government, the better. Just ask the Burmese people. As for Thant Myint U's book it just preens and touts his pedigree. Both not worth paper they are printed on. Kyi May Kaung
4.0 out of 5 stars
Insightful by flawed study of Burma,
By
This review is from: The State in Burma (Hardcover)
Note: An updated version of this book, The State in Myanmar, recently came out. This review will refer to the older edition.First of all, it's important to explain what The State in Burma is not. It is not a popular history of Burma - for that I would recommend Thant Myunt-U's excellent The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma. Nor is it even a general history - again, for that purpose refer to Michael Charney's A History of Modern Burma. This is also not a book about human rights abuses, society, or even politics generally in Burma. Some critics of this book blame Taylor for supposedly supporting the military and not pointing out the human rights abuses (for an example of this type of criticism, see David Scott Mathieson's review of the book in a recent issue of the Irrawaddy magazine). Rather, Taylor's book, as he discusses in his introduction, is a study of the state as an institution in Burma from precolonial times to the present. Despite some tangents, he sticks to this theme fairly well, discussing the structures, stakeholders, and revenues of the state in five time periods: 1) precolonial state, 2) rationalization under the British (1825-1942), 3) colonial politics (1886-1942), 4) displacement of the state under the democratic era (1942-62), and 5) the Ne Win socialist regimes (1962-88). The book begins rather poorly in my opinion, relying too much on abstractions and generalities. This was certainly no history of "names, dates, or places." Rather, the book seems like a tour of the Burmese state from 10,000 feet in the air. Taylor barely stops to mention important leaders in the precolonial state (I don't recall him mentioning Anawratha, Bagyidaw, or Bodawpaya at all). I understand that part of this may be the lack of sources on precolonial Burma, but it would have been helpful for the book to descend from the clouds and actually examine the specific features of the state during different time periods. I thought in many places details would have been more effective than repeating certain buzzwords and clichés in Southeast Asian Studies, such as the oft-repeated phrase "patron-client relationships." Most Southeast Asianists know that patron-client relationships dominate political interactions in the state, but it would have been much more useful to explain what that means in the Burmese state. At some points, Taylor uses general phrases with little meaning, such as the "late early modern" period (which is in fact an oxymoron). I would almost recommend skipping Taylor's discussion of precolonial Burma and instead reading Thant Myint-U's The Making of Modern Burma, an excellent history of the last Burmese dynasty. Hidden within this book are some great analytical gems about Burma, particularly when it comes to financing the state. One observation of the precolonial state, still relevant today, is that the kings hindered private enterprise to prevent the rise of competing centers of wealth or power. He also argues that the dominance of Indian moneylenders (chettiars) before World War II compromised Burmese politicians and allowed the rise of radical nationalists such as Aung San. Taylor also cites the desperate lack of revenue as the underlying cause of the Burma Socialist Programme Party's collapse. Taylor's analysis becomes much sharper as the book progresses, and I think he does a particularly good job with the democratic and socialist eras. In fact, his discussion of those two eras is probably some of the best I've read anywhere. Despite the wide sweep of the book, it is quite scholarly and constantly refers to events or names in Burmese history that might be unfamiliar to the uninitiated (if you want a basic "idiot's guide" to Burma, check out David Steinberg's Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know). I think the book would definitely have been aided by org charts of state institutions and more lists of key historical figures. As for the all important issue of political bias in The State in Burma... Taylor is certainly not sympathetic toward the prodemocracy movement, but I don't think that undermines the book too much. He is generally amoral in his analysis, not pro-military. He does point out when the military has managed state affairs incompetently, but he's not very good at navigating political sensitivities. For example, he seems to accept at face value that several hundred thousand people attended the peasant seminars during the BSPP period and felt as if they participated in the state. However, in taking such a stratospheric view of the country, Taylor may miss some important nuances. For example, Christina Fink, in a sociological, on-the-ground approach in Living Silence in Burma: Surviving under Military Rule, provides several anecdotes about how people were forced to participate in such events either against their will or in return for patronage. Despite what seems to be a peculiar bias, Taylor's book remains one of the more insightful scholarly accounts of the state in Burma. Again, if you are interested in other aspects of Burma, or a popular history, this book might not be for you. However, if you are already familiar with Burmese history and want to gain a deeper understanding, then at its best The State in Burma does exactly that.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
