Burma is a country of some 260,000 sq. miles and as big as France and Britain combined and with a population of some 60 million and borders with India, Bangladesh, China, Laos and Thailand (See map). In 1989, on a date approved by General Ne Win (The head of the Military Government – see more below) and his astrologers the authorities changed the name from Burma to Myanmar. The authorities claimed that the name Myanmar encompasses the many ethnic groups to be found in this country and not just the Burman people that are predominately to be found in the south.
In this Blog I, as many of our guides over the next few days, will use the names Burma and Myanmar interchangeably.
Myanmar like many countries with a diversity of ethnic groups has had an often violent history and kingdoms have come and gone over the years. One underlying constant has been the influence of Theravada Buddhism (A sub-denomination of Buddhism peculiar to Myanmar that allows for the worship of spirit gods but that eschews ‘animism, alchemy and tantric rites’ associated with the mystical origins of Buddhism. This is far too complex to describe here so you may have to do your own research should you want to know more) that gives the country today, and its people, a sense of other-worldliness and timelessness that is both intriguing and infectious and which can be summed up by a quote in the guidebook mentioned by Kipling, Burma “is a delightfully lazy land full of pretty girls and very bad cheroots”.
I am not going to even begin to summarise the history and politics of Myanmar, well only in so far as it helps to explain the current culture of this this extraordinarily exciting country. It you want to know more I’m afraid you will have to do your own research on Wikipedia or in your local library. You will have already deduced, however, that Myanmar is a heady concoction of beliefs arising from Buddhism and astrology, the latter in particular playing a great role in the last two decades of the 20th Century with General Ne Win, for many years the head of the military government, basing many policy decisions on the advice on his astrologers – such as changing overnight from driving on the left to the right since astrologers foretold he would have an accident.
The British of course have also played a significant role in Burma since the late 18th Century. My guidebook records that the period from 1890 to 1920 as the ‘golden era’ of British rule. It goes on to comment that there was little bitterness between the Burmese and their British conquerors mainly because the British brought order and discipline and did not interfere unduly with Burmese society but even here the seeds of a need for independence from foreign domination were to be found since although there was empathy between the Burmese and the British it was never cemented in ‘real understanding’. Again as the guidebook notes, a Burmese minister was reported to have said to a pre-colonial envoy ‘ your customs are so completely opposite in so many points. You write on white paper, we on black paper. You stand up, we sit down; you uncover your head, we our feet, in a token of respect” – more of feet and respect later.
Here the guidebook goes on to note that the British made a fatal error in the administration of the empire by placing Burma under the ‘umbrella’ of British India rule and therefore answering to Calcutta and not London. This measure greatly exacerbated the clamour for independence that began in 1937.
After WWII British colonial rule returned until 1947 when Prime Minister Clement Atlee and the famous father of Aung Sang Su Kyi signed an agreement granting Independence in 1948 but leaving the Commonwealth.
Post Independence the political history of Burma is one dominated by a military-socialist government. By the late 1980s it was clear that Ne Win’s (A General who had been a fundamental force in the drive for Independence) polices of isolationism and extreme socialist economics were failing and this lead to the rise of a new voice for more democratic independence led by Aung Sang Su Kyi in the late 80s.
You will already know about Aung Sang Su Kyi’s house arrest and continued fight for democratisation, which only really came to an end in 2010, with the first multi-party elections. The resulting government established in the following March was a ‘nominal non-military persona’ as one commentator put it, although the leaders of the ‘new’ government are the ‘old’ and ‘retired generals’ but despite this much has changed since 2011 and Myanmar is emerging from a long period of isolationism.
From what I saw and heard Japan is currently a major investor and certainly if the thousands of Japanese, second-hand cars, parked around the harbour are anything to judge by then a very sound trading relationship has already been set up with Japan but I’m sure China will not be far behind trying to secure the vast mineral and other resources of Myanmar to support its own economic growth.
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