Monday, February 27, 2006

Prosopography of the U Nu era Burmese parliament?

All the parliamentary maneuverings in Thailand during the last few weeks have stimulated me to study Lewis Bernstein Namier and also to look further into the U Nu era Burmese parliament. Namier...

"...is best known for his work on parliament and its composition in the latter part of the eighteenth century, which by its very detailed study of individuals caused substantial revision to be made to accounts based on a party system. Namier's best known works were The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III, England in The Age of the American Revolution and the History Of Parliament series he edited later in his life. Namier used Prosopography or collective biography of every MP and peer who sat in the British Parliament in later the 18th century to reveal that local interests, not national ones, often determined how parliamentarians voted. Namier felt that prosopographical methods were the best ones for analyzing small groups like the House of Commons, but was opposed to the application of prosopography on larger groups."

"In addition, Namier used other sources such as wills and tax records to reveal the interests of the MPs. In his time, Namier's methods were innovative and were quite controversial. Namier's obsession with collecting facts such as club membership of various MPs and then attempting to co-relate them to voting patterns led his critics to accuse him of 'taking ideas of history'."

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