Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know (6 page)

The invocation of the past is not simply limited to recorded history. Prehistory has been used for the glorification of both the state and the leaders who have fostered such research and who may believe they have inherited this mantle. Under this administration, a site has been found that the leadership claims contains the world’s oldest humanoid remains. Thus, today Myanmar becomes unique in human history, and indeed, its present leadership politically benefits from archeology and its sponsorship. Other, later prehistoric remains have been found
that are claimed to indicate that Southeast Asian civilizations emanated from what is now Myanmar. Ironically, North Korea has similarly claimed the predominant role in early Northeast Asia by finding the “tomb” of the legendary founder of the Korean “race” in Pyongyang. Perhaps authoritarian regimes seek legitimacy in this prehistorical manner.

The return to the aura of the precolonial period is in part not only to overcome the shame of having been colonized but also to provide a direct link from the past and its glories to the present military, whose leadership is Burman. Significantly, one of General Ne Win’s multiple marriages was to a descendant of the last Burmese king. It is also an indirect effort to demonstrate the unifying powers of the Burman majority over some minority groups that had significant kingships. The Mon Kingdom (1287–1757), centered on what is now Pegu (Bego), was Buddhist and had wealth that was noted by early European travelers to the region, until it was conquered by the Burmans. Another coastal region, the Arakan (Rakhine), had kingdoms subject to Indic influences that existed from about the ninth century until overcome by the Burmans in 1785. Burman hegemony extended over various tribal areas and smaller local states in the Shan region. Significantly, to enhance the past and thereby accrue legitimacy to the present, the regime has rebuilt the royal palaces in Mandalay, Pegu, and Shwebo, compromising authentic architectural styles for contemporary visual and metaphorical effects.

Conquest was not simply for booty. It was inherent in the concept of the world-conqueror Buddhist king (
cakkravatti
), sometimes considered an embryonic Buddha, who invaded not for land but to validate his universalistic religious status. Southeast Asia, however, was land-rich but population-poor. Monarchs forcibly relocated people, and slaves taken in conquest were needed to increase agricultural production, and thus state revenues, and to build and maintain the pagodas necessary for legitimacy. Regimes transported back to the Burman capital Buddhist symbols, from statues to white
elephants to scriptures, providing physical evidence of the monarch’s prowess and religiosity.

Wars and conquests were endemic. The modern concept of national boundaries that extend to a designated line did not exist before the Western conquests of the region; thus, control was contested. Rather, a
mandala
system of sovereignty was the norm, in which power radiated from the Burmese king, and indeed from the throne itself, in a series of concentric circles to almost indefinite distant regions. In those areas, local rulers might owe allegiance and pay tribute to the Burmese king and also to one or several nearby more powerful kingdoms and even to the Chinese emperor in Beijing. This was not considered illogical or inappropriate, but it did foster disputes.

The capital was the center of not only the state but the world, and the legitimacy of the king depended on his being in harmony with the cosmic order. This concept may sound anachronistic, but the attitude that control of the capital itself is crucial and that the capital is the symbolic center—Burmese dynasties often moved their capitals for both political and astrological reasons—may have played some role in the military movement to Naypyidaw in 2005 (see
chapter 6
).

Even though the titles and technology changes may mask past practices, many traditional attitudes and predilections continue today, modified only in part. Under the veneer of modernity, there are remnants, as in most societies, of primordial or deeply embedded concepts and attitudes that still affect both the rulers and the expectations of many of those ruled.

Some scholars have cogently argued that since 1962 the military has in fact acted very much on the model of the Burmese kings. In many traditional societies, including Burma, power was conceived as finite. This is in contrast to modern administrative theory, in which power is viewed as essentially infinite,
so that it can be shared or delegated to the potential advantage of all involved. This has not been the case in Burma/Myanmar, for to share power (from center to periphery, between leaders, etc.) results in automatic loss—a zero-sum game. In these circumstances, power becomes highly personalized. Loyalty thus becomes the prime necessity, resulting in entourages and a series of patron–client relationships. Those outside of this core group may therefore be considered potential adversaries—a “loyal opposition” thus becomes an oxymoron. The potential for diminution of one’s power (
ana
, in Burmese) by sharing it results in information that is carefully guarded (in the modern era, censorship has been the result). Even sharing plans might diminish authority, as could a fixed system of succession, which did not develop. These tendencies continue in the modern era.

Administration was personally (not institutionally) determined. A trained, tested, and permanent bureaucracy never developed, as in China and Korea, resulting today in an administratively weak state unable to manage effectively a socialist economy.

The authority of the state (the kings or modern rulers) extended to economics as well. All wealth and power in the society were under his domain. Oil production, teak forests, and foreign trade were monopolies of the monarchy, so the introduction of tempered socialism on independence under a moderate civilian government and virulent socialism under the military after 1962 had historical precedents. They were also reactions to colonial and foreign control over the economy. Even under the SLORC/SPDC, which has espoused a free market system since 1988, the state has been extremely interventionist.

Monarchs had undifferentiated power. They combined executive and judicial functions, and in theory their rule and authority were absolute, although in practice these were mitigated by high-level Buddhist monks, who often were ministers. Modern leaders are said to have exhibited these same characteristics.

This traditional need for personally defined loyalty and entourages continues and is not confined to the military; it permeates groups on the right and left, public and private institutions, and among pro- and antigovernment organizations as well.

Contemporary historians often claim that the early colonial histories inappropriately treated ethnicity as the salient feature of Burmese history. It is true that the British divided that province of India into Ministerial Burma, which was under direct British control and was largely Burman, and the Frontier Areas (earlier known as the Scheduled Areas), which were the home of many minorities and were more loosely governed. This was, in fact, the Indian model of British governance. Indeed, the
tatmadaw
(armed forces) has continuously claimed that the British instituted a policy of “divide and rule” among ethnic groups that resulted in today’s mistrust among the Burmans and the minorities. The military has claimed that historically the ethnic mélange that is Burma/Myanmar lived together peacefully “in weal and woe,” a peace disrupted by the evil colonialists. Both groups seem to have overstated their cases. Ethnicity did become a critical feature affecting British rule, as we demonstrate in the next chapter, but the contemporary animosities exhibited by the ethnic nationalities (called “races” by the Burmese) stem as much from Burman internal imperialism as from the colonial heritage.

As mentioned, Burman kings conquered and established monarchies within the territories that are now Burma/Myanmar. As they were internally expansive, they were also externally aggressive. Chinese–Burmese relations were (and continue to be) especially salient. The Yüan Dynasty (the Mongols) destroyed the Burmese capital at Pagan (Bagan) in 1287, but later Chinese invasions (there were four between
1765 and 1769) were defeated. In 1644, Ming Dynasty troops fleeing from the new Chinese Qing Dynasty tried to find refuge in Burma, as did Chinese Nationalist (Kuomintang, KMT) soldiers escaping from communist forces in 1949. Both times China eliminated the threat to their government. Some claim that Chinese southward population expansion stopped in Yunnan Province because the lower-lying border areas of what became Burma had a particularly virulent strain of malaria that especially affected the Chinese. Due to the mandala system of multiple sovereignties, the court in Mandalay paid tribute to Beijing. On the British annexation of upper Burma in 1885, the British agreed to continue to pay the Burmese tribute (such tribute was to have been taken by Burmese, not by the British), but never did so. One Burmese king has been known as “the king who fled from the Chinese,” and today relations between the two states are exceptionally close. Some feel that the modern close Sino-Burmese relationship is in fact a variant on the traditional tribute system of states within the Sino-centric sphere of influence.

Thailand, however, has historically been the major rival of Burma. Some of these residual attitudes continue today, exacerbated by contemporary issues in spite of appropriate diplomatic relations. Aggressive Burmese kings continuously fought the Thai, until they destroyed the Thai capital Ayutthaya in 1767. Minority groups occupy both sides of the ethnically ill-defined border. The Shan people in Burma’s Shan State are ethnic and linguistic cousins of the Thai. Many from these groups, some of whom have been in revolt against the central Burmese authorities, have sought refuge in Thailand from Burmese military action. These rebels have been used by the Thai to insulate the conservative Bangkok regime from the “radical” Burmese. Thai attempts to foster buffer zones (essentially ethnic rebel areas) were unstated policy until 1988. These traditional animosities have been ameliorated by more recent regimes in Thailand, but relations can again deteriorate into regional conflict over border disputes, as they did in 2002.

Narcotics produced in Burma/Myanmar have been a major thorn in bilateral relationships. Opium, which is refined into morphine and heroin, was produced in the hill areas of the Shan State and transferred abroad, largely through Thailand. Although opium production is now very limited and has been replaced by production in Afghanistan, a new surge is likely due to a lack of markets for alternative crops. The newer scourge of Burmese-produced methamphetamines has become a major political issue in Thailand. In spite of these negative factors, in the twenty-first century Thailand officially became Myanmar’s largest trading partner and largest foreign investor.

It is significant that today the junta regards the border with Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) as its most vulnerable frontier. Burmese expansion in the early nineteenth century into what was then East Bengal and fears of a Burmese conquest of Dhaka and even Calcutta led to the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–1826) and the British seizure as reparations of two coastal areas of Burma–Arakan to the west and Tenasserim to the east. The Burmese also conquered the kingdom of Manipur on its western flank, threatening the British position in Assam, but the coastal area was of greatest concern. Because western Arakan and the Bangladesh border are both heavily Muslim and culturally related, populations have mixed and moved across these traditionally undefined frontiers. The Burmese do not recognize the citizenship of these people, who call themselves Rohingyas and are in effect an unrecognized cultural minority. The result is that the Rohingyas in Myanmar are stateless today. In January 2009, the Burmese government denied that Rohingyas who were attempting to flee Myanmar to Malaysia by sea were a “national race,” and referred to them as Bengalis.

After the Indo-Pakistani war that led to Bangladesh’s independence, in 1978 over 200,000 fled across the frontier to escape Burmese police and military raids. Although repatriated by the United Nations, a similar exodus took place in 1991–1992, when 250,000 fled. Some 15,000 or so remain in camps in Bangladesh.
As the minorities straddle the Thai frontier to the east, the Muslims, the Chin, and Naga peoples to the west and north of the Burmese border also inhabit the Indian frontier regions, as do the Kachin of northern Burma/Myanmar and Yunnan Province in China.

Early Burmese kingdoms had contacts with the Portuguese and the Dutch, as well as the British. Their colonial period will be covered in more detail shortly, but the lure of China trade as well as fears that the Burmese court was making overtures to the French, who were also interested in the Yunnan trade through their conquest of Vietnam, finally led the British to end the Burmese monarchy in the Third Anglo-Burmese War of 1885.

The ethnic complexities that are endemic along the frontiers of Burma/Myanmar have played critical roles in monarchical and colonial Burmese history; their influence has also been important in contemporary Myanmar.

There is no other single institution in classical Burma more important than Buddhism of the Theravada (or Hinayana) school. Buddhism is the most central of all the primordial values that define a Burman (and some of the minorities as well, such as the Shan and the Mon). The latter strongly influenced the Burmans and the Burmans adopted much Buddhist influence from them. Built onto an indigenous animist base that is still vital and alive, Buddhism permeates the government and peoples’ lives and values. Buddhism in the classical period defined political legitimacy, and every king tried to regulate the
sangha
(monkhood), purify practices, reform various sects and scriptures, and build pagodas. At Pagan alone, there are several thousand pagodas, many still in use and some of massive proportions and architectural importance and beauty. The classical prestige of the
sangha
continues into the contemporary period.