The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century

The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century PDF Author: Thant Myint-U
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324003308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
A New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2019 A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2020 “An urgent book.” —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times During a century of colonialism, Burma was plundered for its natural resources and remade as a racial hierarchy. Over decades of dictatorship, it suffered civil war, repression, and deep poverty. Today, Burma faces a mountain of challenges: crony capitalism, exploding inequality, rising ethnonationalism, extreme racial violence, climate change, multibillion dollar criminal networks, and the power of China next door. Thant Myint-U shows how the country’s past shapes its recent and almost unbelievable attempt to create a new democracy in the heart of Asia, and helps to answer the big questions: Can this multicultural country of 55 million succeed? And what does Burma’s story really tell us about the most critical issues of our time?

The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century

The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century PDF Author: Thant Myint-U
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324003308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
A New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2019 A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2020 “An urgent book.” —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times During a century of colonialism, Burma was plundered for its natural resources and remade as a racial hierarchy. Over decades of dictatorship, it suffered civil war, repression, and deep poverty. Today, Burma faces a mountain of challenges: crony capitalism, exploding inequality, rising ethnonationalism, extreme racial violence, climate change, multibillion dollar criminal networks, and the power of China next door. Thant Myint-U shows how the country’s past shapes its recent and almost unbelievable attempt to create a new democracy in the heart of Asia, and helps to answer the big questions: Can this multicultural country of 55 million succeed? And what does Burma’s story really tell us about the most critical issues of our time?

Women, Peace and Security in Myanmar

Women, Peace and Security in Myanmar PDF Author: Åshild Kolås
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000300838
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
This book describes women’s efforts as agents for change in Myanmar and examines the potential of the peace process as an opportunity for women’s empowerment. Following decades of political turbulence, the volume describes the contributions of women in Myanmar in the midst of a difficult peace process and reflects on the significance of the Women, Peace and Security agenda in this context. The book examines how women have mobilized for peace, while also addressing women’s participation in the conflict, and investigates the perspectives and aims of women’s organizations and the challenges and aspirations of women activists in Myanmar’s ethnic areas. Contributions in the volume discuss and critically assess the argument that war and peacebuilding add momentum to the transformation of gender roles. By presenting new knowledge on women’s disempowerment and empowerment in conflict, and their participation in peacebuilding, this book adds important insights into the debate on gender and political change in societies affected by conflict. This book will be of interest to students of peace and conflict studies, gender studies and security studies in general.

Making Enemies

Making Enemies PDF Author: Mary Patricia Callahan
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801472671
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
The Burmese army took political power in Burma in 1962 and has ruled the country ever since. The persistence of this government--even in the face of long-term nonviolent opposition led by activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991--has puzzled scholars. In a book relevant to current debates about democratization, Mary P. Callahan seeks to explain the extraordinary durability of the Burmese military regime. In her view, the origins of army rule are to be found in the relationship between war and state formation.Burma's colonial past had seen a large imbalance between the military and civil sectors. That imbalance was accentuated soon after formal independence by one of the earliest and most persistent covert Cold War conflicts, involving CIA-funded Kuomintang incursions across the Burmese border into the People's Republic of China. Because this raised concerns in Rangoon about the possibility of a showdown with Communist China, the Burmese Army received even more autonomy and funding to protect the integrity of the new nation-state.The military transformed itself during the late 1940s and the 1950s from a group of anticolonial guerrilla bands into the professional force that seized power in 1962. The army edged out all other state and social institutions in the competition for national power. Making Enemies draws upon Callahan's interviews with former military officers and her archival work in Burmese libraries and halls of power. Callahan's unparalleled access allows her to correct existing explanations of Burmese authoritarianism and to supply new information about the coups of 1958 and 1962.

Where China Meets India

Where China Meets India PDF Author: Thant Myint-U
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466801271
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
Thant Myint-U's Where China Meets India is a vivid, searching, timely book about the remote region that is suddenly a geopolitical center of the world. From their very beginnings, China and India have been walled off from each other: by the towering summits of the Himalayas, by a vast and impenetrable jungle, by hostile tribes and remote inland kingdoms stretching a thousand miles from Calcutta across Burma to the upper Yangtze River. Soon this last great frontier will vanish—the forests cut down, dirt roads replaced by superhighways, insurgencies crushed—leaving China and India exposed to each other as never before. This basic shift in geography—as sudden and profound as the opening of the Suez Canal—will lead to unprecedented connections among the three billion people of Southeast Asia and the Far East. What will this change mean? Thant Myint-U is in a unique position to know. Over the past few years he has traveled extensively across this vast territory, where high-speed trains and gleaming new shopping malls are now coming within striking distance of the last far-flung rebellions and impoverished mountain communities. And he has explored the new strategic centrality of Burma, where Asia's two rising, giant powers appear to be vying for supremacy. At once a travelogue, a work of history, and an informed look into the future, Where China Meets India takes us across the fast-changing Asian frontier, giving us a masterful account of the region's long and rich history and its sudden significance for the rest of the world.

The Karen People of Burma

The Karen People of Burma PDF Author: Harry Ignatius Marshall
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Burma
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description


The Rohingyas

The Rohingyas PDF Author: Azeem Ibrahim
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1849049734
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Brings to light the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya going on in Burma

The Making of Modern Burma

The Making of Modern Burma PDF Author: Thant Myint-U
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521799140
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Burma has often been portrayed as a timeless place, a country of egalitarian Buddhist villages, ruled successively by autocratic kings, British colonialists and, most recently, a military dictatorship. The Making of Modern Burma argues instead that many aspects of Burmese society today, from the borders of the state to the social structure of the countryside to the very notion of a Burmese identity, are largely the creations of the nineteenth century - a period of great change - away from the Ava-based polity of early modern times, and towards the 'British Burma' of the 1900s. The book provides a sophisticated and much-needed account of the period, and as such will be an important resource for policy makers and students as a basis for understanding contemporary politics and the challenges of the modern state. It will also be read by historians interested in the British colonial expansion of the nineteenth century.

Myanmar's Enemy Within

Myanmar's Enemy Within PDF Author: Francis Wade
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1783605308
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
For decades Myanmar has been portrayed as a case of good citizen versus bad regime – men in jackboots maintaining a suffocating rule over a majority Buddhist population beholden to the ideals of non-violence and tolerance. But in recent years this narrative has been upended. In June 2012, violence between Buddhists and Muslims erupted in western Myanmar, pointing to a growing divide between religious communities that before had received little attention from the outside world. Attacks on Muslims soon spread across the country, leaving hundreds dead, entire neighbourhoods turned to rubble, and tens of thousands of Muslims confined to internment camps. This violence, breaking out amid the passage to democracy, was spurred on by monks, pro-democracy activists and even politicians. In this gripping and deeply reported account, Francis Wade explores how the manipulation of identities by an anxious ruling elite has laid the foundations for mass violence, and how, in Myanmar’s case, some of the most respected and articulate voices for democracy have turned on the Muslim population at a time when the majority of citizens are beginning to experience freedoms unseen for half a century.

Letters from Burma

Letters from Burma PDF Author: Aung San Suu Kyi
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141041447
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Previous edition: London: Penguin, 1997.

Little Daughter

Little Daughter PDF Author: Zoya Phan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 184737719X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
Zoya Phan was born in the remote jungles of Burma, to the Karen ethnic group. For decades the Karen have been under attack from Burma's military junta; Zoya's mother was a guerrilla soldier, her father a freedom activist. She lived in a bamboo hut on stilts by the Moei River; she hunted for edible fungi with her much-loved adopted brother, Say Say. Many Karen are Christian or Buddhist, but Zoya's parents were animist, venerating the spirits of forest, river and moon. Her early years were blissfully removed from the war. At the age of fourteen, however, Zoya's childhood was shattered as the Burmese army attacked. With their house in flames, Zoya and her family fled. So began two terrible years of running from guns, as Zoya joined thousands of refugees hiding in the jungle. Her family scattered, Zoya sought sanctuary across the border in a Thai refugee camp. Conditions in the camp were difficult, and Zoya now had to care for her ailing mother. Zoya, a gifted pupil, was eventually able to escape, first to Bangkok and then, with her enemies still pursuing her, in 2004 she fled to the UK and claimed asylum. The following year, at a 'free Burma' march, she was plucked from the crowd to appear on the BBC, the first of countless interviews with the world's media. She became the face of a nation enslaved, rubbing shoulders with presidents and film stars. By turns uplifting, tragic and entirely gripping, this is the extraordinary true story of the girl from the jungle who became an icon of a suffering land.