Urban Oral History

When I was searching for a Klong Toey map to send to a visiting client from Singapore, I came across this little article on night entertainment venues in the Klong Toey port area of Bangkok. It has a historical map also. This is not a subject that I would normally be looking for, so I was surprised.

It's basically oral history combined with some photos.

The same approach could be taken for different kinds of urban geography in Yangon from the U Nu era. The reminiscences plus photographs of people in their 60's and 70's could be used. Members of Anglo-Burmese clubs in London or Australia might be one source of information.

The political satire that U Nu wrote before the 1961 election refers to an inerior minister meeting his mistress in Ali Mula Yakwet which seemed to have sinister significance. I made some inquiries and it turns out that this was an area near Bazun-taung (50th street).

Censorship began during the U Nu era

Censorship began during the U Nu era and the practice, once established, continued on into the post-1962 era of military rule. Read this:

"In the 1950s, under Prime Minister U Nu, the press in Burma remained largely unrestricted. The Prime Minister himself was always accessible to journalists, who could easily set up an appointment to meet him at his residence. At that time Burma stood out as one of the few countries in Southeast Asia where journalists enjoyed press freedom."

Not accurate. U Nu put some journalists like Ludu U Hla in jail, although he later blamed it on U Thant (Forthcoming in Christopher Goscha (ed.), Culture of the Cold War (Charney, Michael W. (forthcoming) "Ludu Aung Than: Nu's Burma and the Cold War," in Christopher Goscha (ed.) Culture of Cold War, pp. 11-12).

War and State Building in Cold War Burma I

I'm writing a book review for publication by blogging out the issues first.

The book is Dr. Mary P. Callahan's Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma(2005, Cornell University Press). Two initial observations:

1. Without a bibliography it is hard to see what sources the study relies on.

2. "Cold War" and "United States" are not even in the index, but "CIA" is. "Cold War" does figure prominently in the book blurb though.

Is this only a local history? Wasn't Burma part of the larger Cold War world history of the time?

Important historical facts are presented, but no use is made of them. U Nu's inability to get an invitation to visit Washington and the warm welcome given to Ne Win at the Pentagon seem strangely ironic given that military officers are now denied visas. Why is this important fact relegated to an endnote? (see endnote 11, p. 252). A Burmese newspaper article is the source. Surely, American government archives could provide independent confirmation. Newspapers by themselves can be unreliable.

The fact that western military academies hardly provided any openings for Burma is also interesting (p. 167-8), but once again nothing is made of it. High level military officers in the Phillipines educated at West Point in the United States have played important roles in political change. Personal military relations with the United States have played a role in political change in the Phillipines.

Education abroad in western countries was a conduit for ideas and ideology during the cold war era. Ideas that later had a formative influence on military ideologies and state control. Pol Pot and Ho Chi Men were both educated in France. Kim Il Sung resided in the Soviet Union for a time. Professor Jonathan Spence's Gate of Heavenly Peace chronicles Soviet relations with Chinese intellectuals.

Many blame Burma's current political problems on over 40 years of isolationism, a policy that grew in the cold war's highly polarized political atmosphere, yet I encountered no discussion of isolationism in the book. Both the facts mentioned above have bearing on Burma's growing isolation from the rest of the world during the Cold War.

"How did Burma become so isolated and isolationist?" is the biggest question I have about Burma during the U Nu 1950's. By focusing so narrowly on internal military politics, this book only begins to answer this question.

Politics of State-Business Relations

Dissertation Abstract of:

Kyaw Yin Hlaing (2001) The Politics of State-Business Relations in Post-Colonial Burma, Ph.D. dissertation. Cornell University, in SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring 2004, ISSN 1479-8484)

Got to give this PhD dissertation a read. Chiangmai University has a copy in the dissertations room. The abstract doesn't say what sources he uses to get: "Business Firms in District Towns by Line of Business and Nationality of Ownership (in Percentage)."

What are the characteristics of a good abstract for a historical article? It would have to cover:

1. chronological focus
2. geographical focus
3. nature of primary and secondary sources used
4. nature of historical interpretation,
5. whatever in general makes for a good abstract.

Quoting from above abstract:

"Focusing primarily on the problems prevailing between the state and various societal groups, scholars and journalists have depicted the interactions between the state and society in post-colonial Burma as a series of zero-sum games."

["Zero-sum" must mean no cooperation.]

"...state society relations in Burma cannot simply be reduced to a collection of zero-sum games"

[So there was cooperation]

"...crony capitalism has always thrived and continues to serve as the bedrock of state-business relations throughout the postcolonial period."

[How was it similar or different from the regime in the Phillipines under Marcos that gave rise to the phrase "crony captialism"]

"...all post-colonial Burmese governments depended on the business sector to finance and support their efforts at governance. In a similar vein, business people had to foster and maintain good connections with state elites in order to successfully run their businesses."

"The business sector was never strong enough to capture the state apparatus and make it serve its interests. Rather, a weak state and a weak business sector exchanged favors through the mechanism of informal patron-client relations in order to ensure their mutual survival."

[Does he document concrete instances, i.e. microhistory of businesses ?]

"...the underlying factors that led to the persistence of cronyism as the basic pattern of state-business relations throughout Burma's entire post-colonial period Business Firms in District Towns by Line of Business and Nationality of Ownership (in Percentage)"

"I argue that the persistence of cronyism as the basis of Burma's post-colonial state-business relations can be attributed, on the one hand, to a lack of sufficient technical and fiscal capacities and the problems prevailing in the 'legitimacy renewal mechanisms' of the post-colonial regimes and, on the other, to the wider socio-political and economic environment which did not favor the emergence of the business class as an independent political actor."

[Comparison would be good here to define what is meant by 'crony capitalism' which is even being applied to the current (2005) economic regime of Thaksin in Thailand, very advanced economically]

The Overseas Anglo-Burmese Community

This Wikipedia article provides some interesting background information on an important community in modern Burma. I don't believe this community has been studied in very great depth. After independence in 1948:

"The British left protectional clauses in the Constitution...to account for [sic] the Anglo-Burman people, most importantly, reserved seats in Parliament however, there immediately followed a major exodus of Anglo-Burmans, who were fearful of what awaited them in post-independence Burma. At this time, around a quarter (25%) of the population of Rangoon were enumerated as Anglo-Burmese — this was to decline steadily through to the late 1960s." (Note: A quarter the population seems like an exaggeration. A citation would be nice here.)

"Due to the perceived suffering the Bamar had encountered under British rule, affirmative action of sorts was introduced by the government of U Nu and many Anglo-Burmans began to lose their jobs, to be replaced with pure Burmans as the bureacracy of the country became increasingly Burmanized.

"Additionally, clauses relating to the Burmese language were introduced so that to take the Matriculation to enter the University of Rangoon, prospective students were required to be fluent in written Burmese (which many Anglo-Burmans had not been taught).

"When military rule was established in 1962 by a coup lead by General Ne Win, many more Anglo-Burmans left, due to discriminatory measures taken against minority groups, particularly those the military deemed as reminders of colonial rule Anglo-Burmese and the Karen). Anglo-Burmans already in the armed forces were dismissed and moving on, were not allowed to join the Armed Forces, there were also mass dismissals of Anglo-Burmans from the Civil Service in departments where they had previously dominated, such as the Customs Department and the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs." (Note: Again citations would be nice here.)

Comparisons with other countries and societies might be useful here. The Korean dissident movements that eventually led to the downfall of Marcos in the Phillipines and the Korean generals in South Korea were led by political dissidents who operated outside of the country, Benigno Aquino in California and Kim Dae Jung in Japan. The Anglo-Burmese are maybe the largest group of Burmese migrants to other countries, though I'd sure like to find some statistics to back this assertion up. Karens who have migrated to England are another fairly large group. Despite their status as the largest group of migrants did they ever organize against the U Nu regime from outside of the country? Did they ever try to redress the wrongs that had been done to them?

What about Karens and other ethnic minorities who played important roles in the colonial civil service and armed forces? Did they lead rather insular lifes within their Christian communities? To what extent was the Burma of the U Nu period multi-racial and multi-cultural?

The last question that I have is about Wikipedia entries like this. If the successive layers of editing and quality control are never backed up by citations, how do you ever verify their accuracy?

Just found this A History of the Anglo-Burmese Community.