Author: Shelby Tucker
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 282
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143028626
Description
This book is a comprehensive account of the modern Burmese history. The Burmese civil war started twelve weeks after Britain granted Burma freedom in 1948 and has continued ever since. Shelby defines the war's core causes and shows how a well disciplined army of a wealthy colony was transformed into a ruthless instrument of an impoverished autocracy. Underpinning Burma's troubles, he argues, are unresolved ethnic divisions, the Japanese conquest that exacerbated these divisions, Burma's Herrenvolk pretensions, political rivalry among nationalists preventing an orderly transfer of power, Aung San's assassination, the drug trade, and the personal greed of Burma's military rulers.
Tucker brilliantly surveys various scholars' assessments of the prospects of the peaceful devolution of power to civilian rule and concludes by proposing measures for assisting change in Burma.
Contents
Maps and Illustrations
Acknowledgements
acronyms and Abbreviations
1. The Burmese Void
2. Geography and Ethnicity
3. British vs. Japanese Line-up
4. We Burmans
5. Aung san Triumphant
6. A Hero's Death
7. The Narcocrats
8. The Kleptocrats
9. whither Burma?
Chronological guide to Burmese Civil War
Annotated bibliography
Index