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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.
Why has Myanmar (Burma), a country rich in resources - rice, timber, minerals - descended to 'least developed country' status? Is the explanation to be found inside Burma or beyond? Is the failure of development due to political authoritarianism and conflict? Or perhaps the drugs trade is partly to blame? This book contends that all these factors have contributed. But it also maintains that the mismanagement of the country's resources is of equal, or even greater, importance. A clear answer to the question of Burma's developmental failure is sought by focussing upon the misuse of resources in concert with those factors that are more usually emphasized.
Despite deteriorating economic and developmental conditions, worsening environmental problems, and troubles arising from the unresolved status of its ethnic minorities, Myanmar seems no closer to a political resolution. Myanmar's economy continues to stagnate, with severe implications for its people. Low levels of international assistance have exacerbated the situation. Myanmar the state, community and the environment examines the missed opportunities by government and opposition groups to find a way out of the political impasse and improve the standard of living of the people of Myanmar. This collection provides insights into the country's economic development, in particular the vital rice-marketing sector and the attempts to expand existing industrial zones. It focuses, for the first time, on Myanmar's environmental governance with in-depth case studies, and on the increasing need for effective environmental protection and sustainability..
This book analyses what Myanmar's struggle for democracy has signified to Burmese activists and democratic leaders, and to their international allies. In doing so, it explores how understanding contested meanings of democracy helps make sense of the country's tortuous path since Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won historic elections in 2015. Using Burmese and English language sources, Narrating Democracy in Myanmar reveals how the country's ongoing struggles for democracy exist not only in opposition to Burmese military elites, but also within networks of local activists and democratic leaders, and international aid workers.
These essays support the argument that strong and effective presidential leadership is the most important prerequisite for South Korea to sustain and project its influence abroad. That leadership should be attentive to the need for public consensus and should operate within established legislative mechanisms that ensure public accountability. The underlying structures sustaining South Korea’s foreign policy formation are generally sound; the bigger challenge is to manage domestic politics in ways that promote public confidence about the direction and accountability of presidential leadership in foreign policy.
Examines internal issues of Myanmar, also known as Burma, as well as the country's relations with its neighbors and the United States, discussing the Obama administration's policy of "pragmatic engagement," which links the removal of sanctions to implementation of greater freedom and respect of human rights. Original.
General Ne Win's state reformation in the name of the "Burmese Way to Socialism" contributed to the expansion of the political role of the Myanmar Armed Forces, the tatmadaw, but the underlying dynamics of this change remain poorly understood. Drawing on propaganda publications, profiles of the country's political elites, and original documents in Burma's military archives, Yoshihiro Nakanishi offers a fresh look at the involvement of the tatmadaw in Burma's ideological discourse and civil-military relations. The tatmadaw's anti-communist propaganda during the 1950s was a key element in state ideology under the Ne Win regime, and the direct participation of tatmadaw officers in the Burma Socialist Programme Party and government ministries at the national and local level transformed the political party system and civilian bureaucracy. Personal relationships -- between Ne Win and the tatmadaw officer corps, and within the military -- were central to the growing influence of the military, and to the outcome of the political crisis and subsequent military coup d'état in 1988. Nakanishi's discussion of these processes reveals many heretofore-unknown facts about this "dark age" in the country's political history, and highlights its institutional legacy for the post-1988 military regime and the reformist government that succeeded it. His thought-provoking conclusions are significant for Southeast Asia specialists and for students of politics generally, and his insights will be useful for anyone seeking to engage with Myanmar as it comes to terms with an outside world it once kept at arm's length.
No country in Asia in recent years has undergone so massive a political shift in so short a time as Myanmar. Until recently, the former British colony had one of the most secretive, corrupt, and repressive regimes on the planet, a country where Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was held in continual house arrest and human rights were denied to nearly all. Yet events in Myanmar since the elections of November 2010 have profoundly altered the internal mood of the society, and have surprised even Burmese and seasoned foreign observers of the Myanmar scene. The pessimism that pervaded the society prior to the elections, and the results of that voting that prompted many foreign observers to call them a "sham" or "fraud," gradually gave way to the realization that positive change was in the air. In this updated second edition of Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know®, Davd I. Steinberg addresses the dramatic changes in the country over the past two years, including the establishment of a human rights commission, the release of political prisoners, and reforms in health and education. More than ever, the history, culture, and internal politics of this country are crucial to understanding the current transformation, which has generated headlines across the globe. Geographically strategic, Burma/Myanmar lies between the growing powers of China and India. Yet it is mostly unknown to Westerners despite being its thousand-year history as a nation. Burma/Myanmar is a place of contradictions: a picturesque land with mountain jungles and monsoon plains, it is one of the world's largest producers of heroin. Though it has extensive natural resources including oil, gas, teak, metals, and minerals, it is one of the poorest countries in the world. And despite a half-century of military-dominated rule, change is beginning to work its way through the beleaguered nation, as it moves to a more pluralistic administrative system reflecting its pluralistic cultural and multi-ethnic base. Authoritative and balanced, Burma/Myanmar is an essential book on a country in the throes of historic change. What Everyone Needs to Know® is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.
"Robert Taylor, one of the most prominent scholars in Myanmar studies, has written an illuminating study of Ne Win, the most enigmatic and controversial of the first generation of post-independence Southeast Asian leaders, and how he steered a then largely unknown country, Burma (now Myanmar), through the Cold War years. This book, by perhaps the only foreign political analyst to live in Burma under Ne Win, is a significant contribution to the historiography of Myanmar and its unnoticed role in the Cold War in Asia." -- Associate Professor Ang Cheng Guan, Head of Graduate Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. "This book fills a major gap in the literature on Myanmar by providing the first scholarly account of the life of General Ne Win, its enigmatic ruler for over 25 years. It will be of interest not only to professional Myanmar watchers, who have long awaited a detailed and comprehensive study of this important historical figure, but to anyone who wants to learn more about this troubled Southeast Asian country, where Ne Win’s legacy is still being felt today." -- Andrew Selth, Adjunct Associate Professor, Griffith Asia Institute. "The Colonel Ne Win of World War II and General Ne Win of post-independent Myanmar was not the same as Chairman Ne Win of the BSPP. Nor was the context of those days similar to the context by which he is normally judged today. The present work (and Taylor’s scholarship in general) is acutely aware of such anachronistic projections backward, made to commensurate with certain desired academic and political consequences. Taylor examines Ne Win’s life and career in the context of when it occurred. This book returns Ne Win to the period to which he belonged." -- Michael Aung-Thwin, Professor of South East Asian History, University of Hawaii. "It is difficult to imagine that this study of Ne Win, the dominant figure in the politics of Burma through most of the second half of the twentieth century, will ever be surpassed. Immensely detailed, insightful, and impressively understanding, this is an outstanding work of scholarship." Ian Brown, Emeritus Professor of the Economic History of South East Asia, School of Oriental and African Studies (London).
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?