This is a translation of chapters from the Mon-Burmese epic Razadarit Ayeidawpon. Both the Burmese and an English translation are given.
The epic tale of Rajadhirat records the history of a long war between Mon Lower Burma and Burman Upper Burma (c. 1383-1425). The epic survives to this day in a collection of manuscripts written in three different languages: Mon, Burmese, and Thai:
- Introduction
- Rajadhirat epic translation.
- Condensed version of epic in academic paper.
- Interesting sentences and vocabulary list.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Monday, January 14, 2008
5. Emuntaya’s deception to lure Minyekyawswa into battle
"Rajadhirat then wondered how Minyekyawswa might be advised that he would be in Dala. Emuntaya volunteered to have this accomplished by going over to Minyekyawswa as if he had defected from his side. Asked to furnish further details, he said he would say that he was disenchanted with his monarch for failing to pursue a more aggressive policy and for not taking action to dislodge the besiegers of Dala and with Deinmaniyut for not acting like a general as he was supposed to be; that for speaking out his mind he was threatened with the death penalty and to have his whole family clapped in irons by Deinmaniyut; that the king backed Deinmaniyut so that he had decided to defect and serve under Minyekyaswa; that he would then participate with the prince’s nobles in one or two actions to further gain Minyekyaswa's confidence after which he would return to Dala. The king agreed with this plan and gave him five viss (18 pounds / 8 kg) of gold to be distributed among nobles and citizens of Dala." (edited version of San Lwin's English translation, 141; Binnyadala in Burmese, 315, Note: San Lwin's translation seems to paraphrase and condense a lot here)
6. Emuntaya deserts from the Mon to the Burmese
Dala was heavily surrounded by Myanma troops on both the river side and the land side. When Emuntaya arrived, at Dala's port Chinthe (lion) they were stopped by the garrison commander of the Panpe garrison (htaung-hmu) and the lord of Myo-taung who were blocking the route through at this point.
When the lord of Myo-taung saw them, he asked them who they were. "I am Emuntaya, and after suffering disappointment at the hands of my lord, I request to be received by the lord of the Golden Palace as a servant," he asked the lord of Myo-taung. Emuntaya spoke in the manner that he had proposed to the king. When they heard this, they gave him find Basoes, fine shirts, wrapped up in a bundle and brought Emuntaya from Myo-taung and presented him to Minyekyawswa. Minyekyawswa questioned him. Emuntaya responded in the same way as he had answered the lord of Myo-taung. After that, when Yazathinkyan had listened to him, he addressed the king.
"Such is the lord Minyekyawswa's great royal glory and power (hpon-daw-gyi) that the royal uncle's minister, the noble (thu-yei-kaung) Emuntaya, has arrived here to be received as a royal servant. If what Emuntaya says is true, when the royal desire for Pegu has been fulfilled (i.e. Pegu has been conquered) he should be given any domain to rule over than he desires (myo-sa)." And when Yazathinkyan had spoken, Emuntaya in turn spoke, "This servant has suffered disappointment at the hands of his lord, and have arrived at the royal feet of the son of the lord of the golden palace. Henceforth, I will bear the burden or royal affairs (enter royal service), and from the time I cut down my own people, the Mons, you will place your royal trust in me," Emuntaya spoke thus. Emuntaya was presented with gifts. ." (edited version of San Lwin’s English translation, 141; Binnyadala in Burmese, 315-316)
7. Emuntaya deserts from the Burmese back to the Mon
At dawn, some Mons were seen outside the city gate near the palisade erected to prevent elephants from rushing the gate.
Emuntaya accompanied a party of Burmese troops who attacked them with swords, killed a couple of Mons from Dala himself and dragged their bodies back into the stockade. When the Myanma troops saw this they reported it to Minyekyawswa. Minyekyawswa awarded Emuntaya.
On another day Emuntaya was ordered to ride in the front of an elephant, while the lord of Salin rode in the middle. As they rode out of the stockade and drew near to the moat, a contingent of Mons emerged from the town and attacked them. The Myanmar troops accompanying them fled.
Grasping his sword, Emuntaya told the lord of Salin that he was going to attack and, climbing down from the elephant, made as if he was going to attack the Mons and followed in pursuit. He didn't attack them and instead threw away his sword, running into the town to take cover.
When the lord of Salin reported this to Minyekyawswa, he clapped his hands in anger and shouted out across the moat to Banya Dala, son of the Mon king Rajadhirat:
"Emuntaya has tricked us and told us lies. When Emuntaya leaves the city and returns to his king I will see that he is rewarded for this.”
Banya Dala passed the message on to Emuntaya, whose reply in turn was shouted back across the moat to the son of the mighty and powerful king, Minyekyawswa, that tomorrow Emuntaya would, in fact, return to Pegu.
To this the Myanma side shouted back once again a reply, "Emuntaya, do you have wings? Can you fly? Will you dig a tunnel under the earth? You were only able to return because you played a trick on us."
"I will leave the town. Just wait," Emuntaya replied.
The Myanma forces waited for him surrounding the town many levels deep on both the land and water approaches to the town. Minyekyawswa shouted out to his officers to keep guard, "Tommorrow, Emuntaya will try to leave the town. We will wait for him and catch him."
(edited version of San Lwin’s English translation, 141; Binnyadala in Burmese, 316)
8. Emuntaya escapes from Dala
Meanwhile Emuntaya handed over the gold that he had been entrusted with to Binnya Dala as instructed by the king.
He had a raft constructed of banana stems and hid his sword in one of these. He lay stretched out like a corpse smearing his face with turmeric. Then he was rolled up in a tattered reed mat. Four women with hair unraveled beat their breasts with their fists and cried out in lament:
"Others have their husbands to comfort them in these difficult times but you choose to leave us at a time when the visitation of war brings famine upon us."
This little scene was played out near the Lion Gate where it could be seen by the Burmese on the other side.
He was then placed on the banana stem raft with an earthen plate of rice and a whole chicken near his head lit by a glowing torch. The raft was cast of and the women gave a fearful whoop of lamentation and a final burst of breast beating.
As the raft drifted close to one of the Burmese pickets keeping watch in boats, the small raft was pushed away into the current and carried steadily upstream by the tide. By the time that the village of Tapauk Tanaut was reached the picket boats had been left far behind so that Emuntaya climbed ashore after taking out the hidden sword and proceeded to Pegu.
Around midday back in Dala the Burmese troops called out for Emuntaya to come out if he was to come out at all. From the town came the reply that he had already left at dawn. The Burmese troops that had been waiting for him since dawn let out a string of abuses (laughed derisively).
(edited version of San Lwin’s translation, 142)
Version in Harvey’s History of Burma (1925), taken from the Hmannan Yazawin:
"Then prince Minrekyawswa shouted out to prince Binnyadala "Emuntaya spake untruth and hath done me disrespect. By guile hath he entered the town. But if he can come out and return to his king, I will give him great gifts." When Prince Binnyadala told these words to Emuntaya, he said, "Son of my glorious master, tell them that Emuntaya will go up to Pegu tomorrow." And the Burmese shouted, "Hath Emuntaya wings to fly above? Or is he a snake that can creep beneath? He entered the town by guile only." And Emuntaya answered them, "I shall win forth, keep what guard you please." And prince Minyekyawswa charged his captains saying, "Tommorrow Emuntaya will come forth, saith he. Keep ye watch to take him." And they kept double watch by land and water. But Emuntaya gave unto the king's son Binnyadala the five viss of gold that the king had entrusted unto him, and then he made the counselors and captains go far away, and before dawn he caused men to make a raft of plantain trees, and he thrust his sword in one of the trees. And he made himself appear like a corpse, smearing his cheeks and ears with turmeric, and wrapping his body around with old matting. And four or five women let down their hair and beat their breasts and wept as they wailed "Other husbands cleave to wife and child through good and ill, and forsake them not in war or famine. But thou has forsaken us and gone away. What shall we do, thy wife and orphans in this cruel war, this cruel famine?" Thus wailing they lifted up the corpse, while the Burmese soldiers who were near the Shan-Death gate of the town looked on. Gently the women laid the body on the plantain raft, with an earthen dish and a cup of rice and a chicken; and they lit oil lights and placed them at the head, and pushed forth the raft into the middle of the stream. And the women followed it beating their breasts and weeping and crying aloud Shall thou forsake us tus?" But the raft floated along and came near a Burmese boat, and the Burmese said "See! It is a corpse." and they pushed it away with a bamboo. And the raft was carried up stream by a strong flood tide, and when it had come to Ta-paw-ta-ngauk [in Pegu district near Kyaut-tan] because it was now far from the Burmese boats, Emuntaya took his sword out from the plantain log and went up to Pegu...and Prince Minyekyawswa sent a messenger to Pegu...and the Messenger asked King Razadarit saying "My master asks if it be true that Emuntaya hath returned to thee, as men say." And king Razadarit called Emuntaya and he came before the messenger. And when the messenger saw him, he gave him a horse with golden trappings and a velvet robe from prince Minyekyawswa." (Hmannan II.44, quoted in Harvey, 1925, 84-85)
9. Minyekyawswa sends an envoy to Rajadhirat with gifts
A fairly literal translation to English:
In the evening Minyekyawswa sent his men to Prince Banya Dala and Awa-na-naing to speak with them.[Note: There are obviously a lot of issues to be worked out in translating this old text. There is often a tradeoff between literally and rendering exactly what the Burmese text is saying and the way it is saying it and other factors such as readability of the translation and having it make sense to modern-day non-Burmese readers without a lot of cumbersome accompanying footnotes.
"We have waited til dusk for Emuntaya to travel up river for Pegu. Why hasn't he left yet?," they asked.
"Doesn't younger brother Minyekyawswa know? Emuntaya left for Pegu at dawn," Prince Banya Dala replied.
When Minyekyawswa's men came back, they related what had happened. When Minyekyawswa had listened to their story, he was quite surprised and because he didn't believe what they had said, he sent a courier with a letter to Pegu. The courier's official position was that of "let-ya thaut-hmu" [leader of the left wing thwei-thauk]. The letter read as follows:Exceedingly dear and venerable elder uncle, to whom Minyekyawswa addresses this letter, I had heard that you fled to Martaban (Mottama). Since elder uncle has now returned from Martaban to Pegu, my desire to fight elephant to elephant with you (duel) will soon be realized. It is because elder uncle ran away that I have been staying in Dala. Older uncle has chosen neither to come after me from upriver, nor to come after me from downriver.Minyekyawswa sent this letter together with one fine horse equipped with gold reins and one set of red ruby bracelets to King Rajadhirat. To the courier Let-ya Thaut-hmu, he gave the order: "If you meet Emuntaya, award him with this fine horse equipped with golden reins and also with this velvet robe."
"Being from a sovereign line of kings, when you see war you feel disheartened? One who acts like older uncle cannot be considered a sovereign king. If elder uncle requests that I travel upriver to Pegu, I will. If elder uncle wants to travel downriver I will likewise welcome him."
The courier set off to Pegu and when he arrived there, the lord Rajadhirat was residing at Thebyuchaung. Rajadhirat ordered that the courier be welcomed and when the courier arrived in the presence of Rajadhirat , the courier presented the letter and gifts that had been given to him to present. When Rajadhirat had listened to the letter, he ordered the courier to send the following message in return: "Tell my nephew (Minyekyawswa) not to come up to Pegu, I will come instead to Dala.
Then the courier inquired as to whether Emuntaya had already arrived back at the royal feet or not, whether this was true or not true, the royal nephew (Minyekyawswa) wished to know. The courier addressed the king that he was to inform the royal nephew as to whether he had seen Emuntaya or not.
Emuntaya was called and when he arrived in front of the courier, the courier bestowed upon him the many gifts (su) that Minyekyawswa wished to award him with, including the horse, the golden reins, and the velvet robe. In return the lord Minyekyawswa was given as gifts one green velvet robe and sixteen rolls of cloth for basoes (sarongs).
The courier was rewarded for his efforts and given as gifts a fine basoe and a golden bowl (shwei-hpala). The courier returned to Dala and reported all that had transpired to Minyekyawswa especially the return of Emuntaya" (Banya Dala, Razadarit Ayeidawpon in Burmese, 318).
In my translation I tried to be more literal but also tried to avoid English idioms which sometimes seem misplaced when translating an ancient text. Sometimes providing the exact Burmese word used can shed light on exactly what was said to those familiar with the Burmese language. For example, "award" as the translation of the Burmese word "su" (award) is often used when the word "gift" perhaps would be more appropriate, since it really seems to be an extension of the practice of gift exchange found in many cultures. In the text above, it does not seem to be correct usage to describe valuable objects given to an enemy king as "awards." "Gifts" seems more appropriate. The use of the word "present" instead of "gift" as seen in some translations also perhaps seems too quaint according to modern usage of the two words.
The theme of rewarding warriors who excel in battle whether they are working for or against you, perhaps with an aim to getting them to desert to your side, is an oft repeated theme in Rajadhirat]
Here is the venerable senior scholar U San Lwin's translation that I used as a guide:
"At dusk Minyekyawswa sent his men to call on prince Binnya Dala and Smin Awananaing to inquire into this matter and they were told by Binnya Dala that did not Minyekyawswa know that he had left at dawn. Accordingly, a courier was sent to Pegu with this letter, "Dear Elder Uncle to Minyekyawswa informs that, I had heard that you ran away to Martaban but now that you are back in Pegu my hopes of jousting with you on elephant will be realised soon. I was in Dala all the time but you chose not to come at me either from upstream or downstream but instead ran away. There is no monarch like you who is so battle-shy. If you would like me to come to Pegu I will gladly do so or should you come down for me I will welcome you." This was carried by the commander of the left wing of blood brothers, together with a steed caparisoned in gold and a pair of ruby bracelets to be presented to Razadarit. He was also given a fine horse caparisoned in gold and a velvet robe with instructions that they were to be awarded to Emuntaya if he happened to meet him at the court of Pegu.
Razadarit was staying at Thebyuchaung when Minyekyawswa's courier arrived and after the message had been conveyed Razadarit told the courier "Tell my nephew that he need not come up to Pegu but that I will be coming down to Dala. Then the courier submitted to the king that he had also been given the task of looking up Emuntaya. Emuntaya was summoned and and Minyekyawswa's presents were duly given to him. King Razadarit then gave a green velvet robe and sixteen bolts of material each enough for a suit as presents for Minyekyawswa and a bowl made of gold and a length of quality cloth for the courier. All these were duly reported on the courier's return" (San Lwin, 142-143).
10. King Mingaung of Ava marches south on Salat
When king Mingaung heard that King Rajadharit had returned to Pegu, he set off for Salat in the south with prince Minyethihathu and Thado each commanding a column (tat). Thado was accompanied by his deputy (sit-ke) Tu-yin-kyaw. The two columns together consisted of 50 war elephants, 500 horse, and 10,000 troops. At that time Salat was held by Rajadhirat's minister Byat Za with 7,000 men, 5 war elephants, and 30 horse.
At this time King Razadarit was residing in Kyat Zana where he built a pavilion with tiered roofs and held a hair washing ceremony. The ceremony was held on the 5th day of the waxing moon in the month of Tabaung.
The march to Dala began. Razadarit's main force had Deinmaniyut as commander, Re Kaman deputy commander, a column commanded by Prince Dhamma Yaza had Baik-ka-myin as deputy.
Prince Banya Payan on a war elephant that was in musth and harnessed in a red howdah, red saddle flaps, red pennants flying on the howdah and ornamented with red on its forehead and with the elephantry guards holding red lances formed the van together with ten elephants and a unit of 5,000 troops.
The column under Binnya Yaza had thirty elephants and 11,000 troops. The prince was mounted on an elephant in a golden howdah surmounted by a white umbrella with gold howdah flaps, gold ornamenting its forehead and elephantry guards holding gold lances.
Razadarit's force consisted of 30 elephants and 10,000 men with the king shaded by a white umbrella riding the war elephant named Hsin Ye with a black howdah, black howdah flaps, and elephantry bearing black lances.
When Minyekyawswa received reports that Rajadhirat was marching against him, he called a conference. Yaza-thin-gyan spoke up:
"Razadarit is a very brave warrior and will rarely withdraw from an engagement. If he is in command, should we continue to lay siege, we will be attacked from the front and rear. To prevent such a predicament we should lift the siege and combine our land and river commands to establish a strongpoint. At this strongpoint we can go on the defensive if he chooses to attack or mount an offensive if he does not move against us."
Minyekyawswa agreed with Yazathingyan's estimation of the situation and his strategy of lifting the siege and establishing a strongpoint at Thakan, thereby concentrating both land and river forces at this one point.
(edited version of San Lwin's translation, 143-144)
11. A young warrior fails to carry out orders and is punished
King Rajadhirat erected a stockade at Kyat Le near Dala. From there he mounted the elephant sired by Hsin Ye and escorted by 1,000 troops entered Dala where he was jubilantly received by Prince Binnya Dala, Smim Awananaing and the citizenry of Dala. Rajadhirat showered gifts on them.
Rajadhirat asked Smim Awananaing whether the Burmese prince was given to charging out from his stockaded camp. Awananaing assured the king that Minyekyawswa was like a fighting cock ever eager to launch itself against any rooster it happened to see.
"Then we are certain of getting the Burmese prince," said Rajadhirat.
Turning to Thwe Lagunsan, his personal attendant and bearer of his betel box and water goblet, he issued orders:
"Your elephant is nimble and quick. Go with an escort of 300 warriors to Minyekyawswa's camp and try and draw him out. If he pursues you don't turn and fight but come back with all speed. "
Thwe Lagunsan made the gesture of obeisance and departed on his mission. When they were detected, Minyekyawswa sent the Governor of Kale with 1,000 horsemen after him.
Thwe Lagunsan turned back on seeing the cavalry emerge. The Burmese horsemen pressed on with vigour and started to catch up to them. At this point, Thwe Lagunsan turned and fought back.
Feinting, the elephant turned left and right during the skirmish and suffered around one hundred spear wounds.
When Rajadhirat heard of this, he clapped his hands and slapped his thighs in anger. When Thwe Lagunsan arrived he handed him over to Emuntaya with the orders:
"He has violated my orders. Cut off his arms and legs and throw him away."
Awa-nan-naing protested, "Thwe Lagunsan erred because he is young and not very clever. As a Buddha would, please spare his life." Acceding to this request, Thwe Lagunsan was put in irons instead.
(edited version of U San Lwin's translation, page 144)
12. The elephant Bagamat's mahout refuses to do him harm
On arriving back at his stockade, Rajadhirat summoned Nga Pyan, the former mahout of the elephant Bagamat. Rajadhirat knew that no other elephant could even challenge this elephant. Bagamat had once been a Mon elephant before being captured by the Burmese. Rajadhirat asked the mahout how this dangerous elephant should be dealt with.
Nga Pyan put forward two plans. The first was for him to head a quartet of she-elephants on which warriors of noble blood who were expert with the spear would be mounted. When they came upon Bagamat, Nga Pyan would call out the elephant’s name
Recognizing his former mahout’s voice Bagamat would not attack them. Then it would be just a matter of disposing of whoever was riding Bagamat and then he, Nga Pyan would take over.
The alternative plan was to enter into the Burmese encampment by stealth late at night and hammer spikes into the elephant's feet, pinning the elephant to the floor so that it could not move or leave the stockade.
King Rajadhirat decided on the second plan and rewarded Nga Pyan for his good ideas. He also selected Bawgati and Mapaing to accompany him on this mission. On the night when the raid was to take place, Nga Pyan peeled three lengths of sugar cane for Bagamat. The party successfully sneaked into the stockade past the dozing Burmese troops.
When they entered the shed where Bagamat was tethered, the elephant recognized the scent of his old mahout and stood quietly. Nga Pyan offered the sugar cane he had brought to Bagamat. He then spoke to the elephant:
"I have come with the king's order to nail your feet to the floor but now that I when I see you, I cannot do that. If you love me, your two brothers and your mother, when the Burmans try to harness you for the coming battle do not let them, go on a rampage within this stockade and then come home to me. My life will be spared only when you come back to me."
Bagamat nodded his head, tears welling up and rolling down his cheeks.
Bawgati and Mapaing remarked that the king had sent them because he was planning to joust on elephants the next day as he did not want Bagamat to be on the other side and if it was not to be done as the king had instructed, the responsibility should be solely on Nga Pyan. Then they left.
Meanwhile, Rajadhirat kept vigil through the striking of the third watch of the night ( ie, about 3 am), waiting for the news of the raid's outcome.
When Nga Pyan and party reached their camp at the stroke of the third quarter of the night, they were asked by the king whether his orders had been carried out. Nga Pyan related to the king what had actually occurred. The king was furious and slapped Nga Pyan:
" I had plans to raise you to noble status (thu-kaung pyu) if you had accomplished your mission. I'll have you and your family burned if your elephant does not come back."
(Slightly edited version of U San Lwin’s translation, 144-145; the Burmese of Banya Dala’s Razadarit Ayeidawpon, 319-320)
13. Preparations for war
On Wednesday, the 4th waxing day of the moon in the month of Tagu, Rajadhirat readied himself for the coming battle by planning how the troops would be arrayed on the battlefield.
Prince Dhamma Yaza would be riding the elephant Yan-gami escorted by 1,000 elephantry troops dressed completely in black carrying black lances and shields, followed by King Rajadhirat mounted on the war elephant Yan.
Rajadhirat’s elephant was to be harnessed to a gold howdah with ruby studded flaps, bravely flying gold pennants and a white umbrella in accordance with his high status. The son of Rajadhirat’s wet nurse Paik Kaman was to ride in the middle of the elephant guarded by 1,000 elephantry troops carrying gilt lances and shields.
To Rajadhirat's right, Deinmaniyut would ride the war elephant sired by Yaza at the head of 1,000 elephantry. Positioned to his left, the minister Maha Tha-mun would be mounted on the elephant named Maha Peik-toun at the head of 1,000 elephantry troops. The warrior Binnya Ram (Yan) would ride Pa-swe-tha-mun accompanied by Emuntaya with an unsheathed sword.
Prince Binnya Dala accompanied by 1,000 men would ride the war elephant Sri Maran, the white canopy of an umbrella spread above him. He was to be deployed close to the town of Dala. Smim Awananaing, mounted on the elephant Nga Yet-nwe would lead 2,000 troops riding by his side.
Meanwhile, Minyekyawswa had heard they were readying themselves for war and was in conference with his nobles. Yaza-thin-gyan cautioned the prince not to be hasty and to act judiciously as "one knows not the course of war just as one cannot fathom whether a white chick or black chick will hatch from a certain egg." Others agreed with his observation and Minyekyawswa continued to feast and drink with his nobles.
Meanwhile, Rajadhirat reminded Deinmaniyut that he had taken the responsibility to see that Minyekyawswa came out to fight.
Deinmaniyut rode in a gilt basket-like howdah with a red umbrella spread atop. Five female elephants and seven to eight hundred troops followed him with measuring poles, string and picks. Deinmaniyut went over to Minyekyawswa’s stockade at Pethakan and from a respectable distance began to measure and mark out frontages with rope and stakes.
Minyekyawswa saw this from a turret and sent his men to investigate. Asked what they were doing, the Mon troops replied that they had been sent by Deinmaniyut to mark out frontages for each unit that was to participate in laying siege to the fortifications.
(edited version of San Lwin’s translation, in the Burmese of Banya Dala, page 321)
14. On the verge of battle at Dala, 1416
When Prince Minyekyawswa learned that the Mons were preparing to lay siege to his stockade, he called together his ministers, and addressed them:
"I have marched here planning to get the Mon king. Now, the Mon king is going to surround us.
To be surrounded is not acceptable. We will leave the stockade and attack them."
None of the ministers dared say anything and each returned to his respective tat (unit, company).
Everyday Minyekyawswa gave his elephant Nga Chit Khaing two large bowls of liquor to drink. On that day he treated him to three bowls. Minyekyawswa drank a lot more than he usually did.
Before leaving for war, Minyekyawswa confided with his wife Min Hla as he held her in his embrace:
"I, the northern prince, am on the verge of taking eerything that the royal uncle, the Mon king, possesses and adding it to the tributary domains that I have gained by conquest.
When the royal elephant Nga Chit Khaing whoops like a crane in battle that is a sign that I'm about to win.
At Mohnyin (in the Shan-Tai states) with the whooping sound of a crane the royal desire was fulfilled.
(royal desire fulfilled = victory).
At the capital of Arakan there was the whooping sound of a crane and then the royal desire was fulfilled.
This time Nga Chit Khaing will once again sing like a crane and the capital of Pegu cannot escape from my hands."
[Note: Possible sexual innuendo here since it is really more than "embrace" his wife with
thon:-that = stroke, fondle; wash, bathe (Myanmar Abidan 521]
After confiding in his wife, Minyekyawswa went outside and assigned the lord of Myedu to Bagamat.
He ordered all the ministers, generals, and tat commanders to mount their elephants and horses and letting out a jubilant shout, he ordered them to follow him wave after wave.
He plied the royal elephant (hsin-daw) Nga Chit Khaing with one more round of drink and positioned his retainer (a-htein-daw) Nanda Thuriya on the middle of the elephant's back.
Over one hundred Shans (Tai) from Kale were ordered to wear pitch black robes and armed with spears to form a guard around his elephant.
Over 1000 Mohnyin Shan soldiers were armed with 3 throwing spears each.
Over 1,000 Burmese troops with gilt helmets, their shields of gold ornamented with peacock feathers were armed with 3 throwing spears each.
Noble cavalrymen wearing buffalo horns, wearing gold helmets, and noblemen clad in gold armour, surrounded him as he rode the royal elephant Nga Chit Hkaing.
The royal drum was sounded three times to announce Minyekyawswa's exit from the fort.
He marched forth without hesitation united with with his brave warriors in one group.
When Minyekyawswa left the stockade, the lord of Kale in the Shan states, Kye Taung Nyo also exited the stockade, mounted on the elephant Ye Thaw Boun with 50 elephantry, 700 cavalry and over 5,000 troops.
The king of Arakan followed on the war elephant Ye Myat Ke with 10 elephantry, 500 cavalry and 7,000 troops.
Then as the lord of Myedu climbed up on the elephant Bagamat, the elephant went berserk and started butting and trampling people and smashing things. The lord of Myedu had to dismount quickly.
On the opposite side, ready and mounted on his elephant, on the verge of commencing the battle, lord Rajadhirat poured water from a golden bowl over the front of the elephant and uttered the following vow:
" I call on the gods who safeguard the Teachings of the Buddha for 5,000 years to declare that this land is the domain of my father king Hsinbyushin, that it was so has been affirmed in a treaty (thissa-pyu) between my father king Hsinpyushin (Lord of the White Elephant) and Minyekyawswa's grandfather, Minkyiswasawke made at Thakyin.
If what I have declared is the truth may I be successful and may Minyekyawswa fall into my hands, while if it is not, may I lose the battle to him."
(based on U San Lwin's translation with extensive changes, pages 146-147, the Burmese of Banya Dala, page 322)
15. Prince Minyekyawswa's headlong charge
Minyekyawswa's headlong charge separated him from the rest of his troops.
The lord of Kale tried to catch up with him, but his elephant was in musth and distracted by the din raised by the saddle flaps on the cavalry and the noise of the elephants and men following him, he turned around and charged at them. (ye-thou-ton-hsin" not translated here? name or description?, ton = alternating cycles of motion and action; heights (MA 189))
This disruption prevented the cavalry and infantry from catching up with Minyekyawswa who was isolated far in front.
As Minyekyawswa and his 1000 brave warriors advanced, they spotted a column out ahead.
Told that it was Banya Dala, Minyekyawswa dismissed it because Banya Dala dared not face him.
Further on, as they came upon Banya Ram (Yan), Minyekyawswa with great disdain also passed him by as a worthy adversary.
Seeing Banya Dhamma Yaza coming up next, he too was dismissed after his men identified him.
Then a dazzlingly resplendent column came into view. Identified as Rajadhirat, Minyekyawswa declared:
"Out of all these it is my Elder Uncle Rajadhirat that I love the most. If I can defeat him, the rest will melt away. "
With the resounding beat of big drums, Minyekyawswa attacked and about a fifth of Rajadhirat's column scattered.
Next he attacked Banya Yaza and scattered the prince and a third of his forces.
Then he turned to Banya Ram's column and broke it up.
Awananaing was next in line but he stood firm and ordered his 7,000 troops to kneel behind their shields and hold their positions.
Rajadhirat, seeing this, turned to him with the deafening sound of war drums.
Banya Dhammayaza, Banya Ram (yan) and Banya Dala also converged on them when they heard the sound of the king's war drums.
Minyekyawswa, having penetrated too far, was isolated and surrounded by enemy elephants while elephantry troops harried his elephant Nga Chit Khaing with spear and sword.
The poor beast shook with pain and dislodged Minyekyawswa from his seat.
(Edited version of U San Lwin’s translation, page 147, the Burmese of Banya Dala, page 323)
16. The search for Minyekyawswa
In the billowing dust raised by elephant hooves and the feet of men, Minyekyawswa seemed to have vanished.
It was only after the third night watch had struck that the severely wounded Minyekyawswa was found under the asper tree as the royal seer had predicted. The lord Rajadhirat spoke to him:
"My son, that you are a young man does not dishearten me. (note: wun: "ma-nei:-bu:" which means "disheartened" translated as "I am not gloating over this" by U San Lwin?)
When you have been treated with proper medicine and are healthy again, if you wish to return to Ava, I will send you there.
If you wish to live in Pegu, I will marry you to my daughter and raise you to the position of crown prince (ein-shei). Nurse yourself back to health."
He then gave Minyekyawswa medicine but he refused to drink the medicine.
"When I came to make war with you elder uncle, I vowed that if I did not take Pegu that I would not return. I will not take the medicine. Now I have reached the end, as I will be named the slave (kyun) of another."
He did not take the medicine and died at the third stroke of night.
The ministers sent him to the cremation ground (thin-kyaing) and ordered that his bones be properly interred at the Kyat Thale pagoda.
(edited translation of U San Lwin, 147-148; the Burmese of Banya Dala, page 324)
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Introduction to Rajadhirat translation
To date the Rajadhirat epic has not received much attention either as a historical text or as literature. Only the Burmese version, the Razadarit Ayeidawpon, has been translated into English.
An unpublished manuscript of this translation has been available for some time in Bangkok, at the Siam Society library, for instance. Copies of the translation were handed out at the Mon conference at Chulalongkorn University in October, 2007.
The senior Burmese scholar U San Lwin who is now near 80 and who lives in Burma was the translator. His fine translation displays great literary artistry in rendering the events of the epic in English. Unfortunately, the political situation in Burma probably means that this publication will never see the light of day. This project takes U San Lwin's translation as a starting point and makes some important sections of the epic available in English with a discussion of some of the interesting Burmese words and phrases found within it. Going back to the original Burmese, I have changed the translation in several ways. First, quoted speech is rendered as quoted speech and not paraphrased. Second, I have strictly followed the order of the original narrative and try to paraphrase as little as possible. Third, I have used the Burmese names in U Kala's Mahayazawingyi which means substituting a "y" for an "r" in many cases. U San Lwin apparently tried to go back to the original Mon spelling for Mon names. A comparative table of names used in the Burmese, Mon, and Thai versions of the work would definitely be useful. Mon names should be spelled according to their Mon translation and eventually I will extract this out of Nai Maung Toe's edited Mon edition. Fourth, lengthy prose in the original translation has sometimes been shortened if clarity and readability is enhanced. For instance, when the Mon and Burmese sides are shouting over the moat of the Mon stockade, short realistic bursts of spoken English are better. Fifth, idiomatic English words that sound dated or out-of-place has been substituted with more general language. My goal is solely to maintain interest in it and keep the ball rolling so that it does get the last stage of editing and then prompt publication.
The Rajadhirat epic is a huge topic that has hardly been touched on at all by historians or scholars studying Burmese literature.
A version of events quite close to that of the epic can be found in Burmese chronicles such as U Kala's Mahayazawingyi and the Hmannan Yazawin[Glass Palace Chronicle].
I have chosen to start with events near the end of the epic, leading up to what is arguably the climax of the epic, the death of Burmese Prince Min-ye-kyaw-swa. Most Burmese and Mon people know of this tale which reads much like a combination of traditional Buddhist Jataka tale of the Buddha's previous lives on earth and the Buddhist Mahavamsa epic of Sri Lanka.
Min-ye-kyaw-swa was said to be the reincarnation of Rajadhirat's son Baw-law-kyan-taw whom, according to tradition, Rajadhirat himself had murdered because of the perceived threat he posed to his rule.
U San Lwin's translation is also unique in another respect. Along with U Pe Maung Tin and Gordon Luce's translation of portions of the Hmannan Yazawin, his translation stands as a parallel corpus of pre-modern Burmese prose.
Historical works stand as the first real instances of Burmese prose outside of Jataka tales and Mahavamsa translations from Pali into Mon and Burmese. There are a lot of words and phrases in the Rajadhirat epic that are not in any currently available dictionary, so reverse engineering U San Lwin's translation to extract a glossary will hopefully provide an valuable aid to students learning to read Burmese.
The Rajadhirat epic is about warfare plain and simple. The inclination of most people, quite reasonably, is to shun warfare, in real life or in writing. After all, reading about violence perhaps begets more violence.
Anthropologists have even published a very popular manifesto, the Seville Statement on Violence, denying that warfare is an intrinsic part of human nature.
Whether warfare is part of human nature or not, works such as Rajadhirat and the Mahavamsa clearly show that warfare has plagued Burma and Sri Lanka for a long time.
Western historians can be said to have systematically avoided and underplayed the role of warfare in pre-modern Burmese history, despite the fact that warfare dominates the narratives of most indigenous historical chronicles. This is probably due to the increasing popularity of Buddhism in the west creating a focus on this particular dimension of Burmese culture. I am a Buddhist too, so I appreciate this, given the centrality of warfare in Burma's post-WWII political problems the legacy of warfare in Burma's pre-modern history should be dealt with in greater depth.
Towards the end of the Buddha's life in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta itself, the tribal Vajji people were wiped out by the kingdom of Magadha under the rule of Ajattasattu, regicide son of King Bimbisara who ruled during most of the Buddha's life (See Steven Collins, 1998, Nirvana and other Buddhist Felicities, 437-445). Again, most people would probably wish to avoid this unsavory part of the Buddhist scriptures. Contemplating the human activity of warfare in all its terrible detail might, in the final analysis, be likened to meditations on a human corpse in a cremation ground, as found for instance in the Visuddhimagga. It is in this vein and to provide such a lesson that this translation has been done.
An unpublished manuscript of this translation has been available for some time in Bangkok, at the Siam Society library, for instance. Copies of the translation were handed out at the Mon conference at Chulalongkorn University in October, 2007.
The senior Burmese scholar U San Lwin who is now near 80 and who lives in Burma was the translator. His fine translation displays great literary artistry in rendering the events of the epic in English. Unfortunately, the political situation in Burma probably means that this publication will never see the light of day. This project takes U San Lwin's translation as a starting point and makes some important sections of the epic available in English with a discussion of some of the interesting Burmese words and phrases found within it. Going back to the original Burmese, I have changed the translation in several ways. First, quoted speech is rendered as quoted speech and not paraphrased. Second, I have strictly followed the order of the original narrative and try to paraphrase as little as possible. Third, I have used the Burmese names in U Kala's Mahayazawingyi which means substituting a "y" for an "r" in many cases. U San Lwin apparently tried to go back to the original Mon spelling for Mon names. A comparative table of names used in the Burmese, Mon, and Thai versions of the work would definitely be useful. Mon names should be spelled according to their Mon translation and eventually I will extract this out of Nai Maung Toe's edited Mon edition. Fourth, lengthy prose in the original translation has sometimes been shortened if clarity and readability is enhanced. For instance, when the Mon and Burmese sides are shouting over the moat of the Mon stockade, short realistic bursts of spoken English are better. Fifth, idiomatic English words that sound dated or out-of-place has been substituted with more general language. My goal is solely to maintain interest in it and keep the ball rolling so that it does get the last stage of editing and then prompt publication.
The Rajadhirat epic is a huge topic that has hardly been touched on at all by historians or scholars studying Burmese literature.
A version of events quite close to that of the epic can be found in Burmese chronicles such as U Kala's Mahayazawingyi and the Hmannan Yazawin[Glass Palace Chronicle].
I have chosen to start with events near the end of the epic, leading up to what is arguably the climax of the epic, the death of Burmese Prince Min-ye-kyaw-swa. Most Burmese and Mon people know of this tale which reads much like a combination of traditional Buddhist Jataka tale of the Buddha's previous lives on earth and the Buddhist Mahavamsa epic of Sri Lanka.
Min-ye-kyaw-swa was said to be the reincarnation of Rajadhirat's son Baw-law-kyan-taw whom, according to tradition, Rajadhirat himself had murdered because of the perceived threat he posed to his rule.
U San Lwin's translation is also unique in another respect. Along with U Pe Maung Tin and Gordon Luce's translation of portions of the Hmannan Yazawin, his translation stands as a parallel corpus of pre-modern Burmese prose.
Historical works stand as the first real instances of Burmese prose outside of Jataka tales and Mahavamsa translations from Pali into Mon and Burmese. There are a lot of words and phrases in the Rajadhirat epic that are not in any currently available dictionary, so reverse engineering U San Lwin's translation to extract a glossary will hopefully provide an valuable aid to students learning to read Burmese.
The Rajadhirat epic is about warfare plain and simple. The inclination of most people, quite reasonably, is to shun warfare, in real life or in writing. After all, reading about violence perhaps begets more violence.
Anthropologists have even published a very popular manifesto, the Seville Statement on Violence, denying that warfare is an intrinsic part of human nature.
Whether warfare is part of human nature or not, works such as Rajadhirat and the Mahavamsa clearly show that warfare has plagued Burma and Sri Lanka for a long time.
Western historians can be said to have systematically avoided and underplayed the role of warfare in pre-modern Burmese history, despite the fact that warfare dominates the narratives of most indigenous historical chronicles. This is probably due to the increasing popularity of Buddhism in the west creating a focus on this particular dimension of Burmese culture. I am a Buddhist too, so I appreciate this, given the centrality of warfare in Burma's post-WWII political problems the legacy of warfare in Burma's pre-modern history should be dealt with in greater depth.
Towards the end of the Buddha's life in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta itself, the tribal Vajji people were wiped out by the kingdom of Magadha under the rule of Ajattasattu, regicide son of King Bimbisara who ruled during most of the Buddha's life (See Steven Collins, 1998, Nirvana and other Buddhist Felicities, 437-445). Again, most people would probably wish to avoid this unsavory part of the Buddhist scriptures. Contemplating the human activity of warfare in all its terrible detail might, in the final analysis, be likened to meditations on a human corpse in a cremation ground, as found for instance in the Visuddhimagga. It is in this vein and to provide such a lesson that this translation has been done.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Judson's Burmese dictionary free at Google books
Judson's Burmese to English dictionary, which is still the only dictionary that has some of the archaic vocabulary found in old Burmese writings, is available for free at Google Book Search. you can view it onsite or download a pdf file. There are several editions available:
1. 1826 edition
2. 1852 edition
3. 1849 edition
4. Another 1849 edition
Judson's grammar is also available.
An old Anglo-Burmese dictionary from 1852 is also available.
Keep checking back at the Google Book Search Burmese Language category, since new titles are likely to become available.
Judson's bible translation is also available online. Reading the English with the Burmese in parallel is good language practice.
1. 1826 edition
2. 1852 edition
3. 1849 edition
4. Another 1849 edition
Judson's grammar is also available.
An old Anglo-Burmese dictionary from 1852 is also available.
Keep checking back at the Google Book Search Burmese Language category, since new titles are likely to become available.
Judson's bible translation is also available online. Reading the English with the Burmese in parallel is good language practice.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Why not making Buddhism part of the Thai constitution may actually make Buddhism stronger
Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century Thailand. By Kamala Tiyavanich. University of Hawaii Press, 1977, xxi + 410 pages, ISBN 0-8248-1781-8, U.S. $29.95. [Book Review]
The question of whether Buddhism should be made the official state religion of Thailand in the new constitution has been raging lately.
Before this time, Buddhism has not been the official state religion in the constitution, even though perhaps about 90% of Thais are Buddhist and the King is required to be Buddhist in the constitution.
The issue became political last week when Thaksin's satellite TV station rather opportunistically adopted the issue as its own for political purposes.
Perhaps slightly paradoxically, there are good reasons for those who want to see Buddhism thrive in the world not to have it written into the constitution as the state religion.
Relaxing state controls over religion, especially Buddhism, encourages local diversity. At the turn of the century (c. 1900) a lot of diversity in Buddhism in Isan and the north was wiped out by tight government regulation of the Buddhist religion as the above book on forest monks demonstrates.
Furthermore, when Buddhism becomes an appendage of Thai nationalism the future doesn't bode well for Buddhism as a world religion. How can a thinking person accept the universal applicability of a religion that exists in many countries from Burma to Sri Lanka to the west when it is tied to the vagaries of secular national politics in Thailand, something that can change rather rapidly as we've seen recently.
World reknown Thai Buddhist thinkers like Buddadhasa Bhikku and Sulak Sivaraksa (his website) seem to be critical of secular trends of nationalistic influence in Buddhism.
The question of whether Buddhism should be made the official state religion of Thailand in the new constitution has been raging lately.Before this time, Buddhism has not been the official state religion in the constitution, even though perhaps about 90% of Thais are Buddhist and the King is required to be Buddhist in the constitution.
The issue became political last week when Thaksin's satellite TV station rather opportunistically adopted the issue as its own for political purposes.
Perhaps slightly paradoxically, there are good reasons for those who want to see Buddhism thrive in the world not to have it written into the constitution as the state religion.
Relaxing state controls over religion, especially Buddhism, encourages local diversity. At the turn of the century (c. 1900) a lot of diversity in Buddhism in Isan and the north was wiped out by tight government regulation of the Buddhist religion as the above book on forest monks demonstrates.
Furthermore, when Buddhism becomes an appendage of Thai nationalism the future doesn't bode well for Buddhism as a world religion. How can a thinking person accept the universal applicability of a religion that exists in many countries from Burma to Sri Lanka to the west when it is tied to the vagaries of secular national politics in Thailand, something that can change rather rapidly as we've seen recently.
World reknown Thai Buddhist thinkers like Buddadhasa Bhikku and Sulak Sivaraksa (his website) seem to be critical of secular trends of nationalistic influence in Buddhism.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
John Strong on King Ashoka
Collection of readings on King Ashoka
This freely downloadable collection of readings on King Ashoka includes an article written by scholar of Buddhism John Strong entitled: Images of AÅoka: Some Indian and Sri Lankan Legends and their Development that discusses the legends associated with King Ashoka.
John Strong's The Buddha, a biography
John S. Strong. The Buddha: A Short Biography. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2001. xv + 203 pp. Illustrations, tables, Sanskrit glossary, bibliography, notes, index. $15.95 (paper), ISBN 1-85168-256-2. Reviewed by Jessica Main, Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University. Published by H-Buddhism (September, 2003) [Book Review]
The approach of scholar John Strong's biography of the Buddha has broad applicability to pre-modern Southeast Asian history:
Strong also expands the notion of biography "beyond the one-life paradigm,"not unlike Yukio Mishima's trilogy, to previous lifes by including the Jataka tradition.
The approach of scholar John Strong's biography of the Buddha has broad applicability to pre-modern Southeast Asian history:
Strong begins with a concise description of the history of scholarship on the Buddha’s life that stretches from the late nineteenth century to the present. Then, he contrasts these academic portraits of the Buddha with "tales that have been remembered and revered, repeated and reformulated" (pp. 1-3) by practitioners of Buddhism throughout its history. Avoiding a strictly factual search for the "historical Buddha," Strong provides "a middle way between remythologizing and demythologizing, between myth-making and history-making" (p. 3). He discusses the human, contextual, and rooted parts of the Buddha’s life as well as the supernatural and mythical ones.First, there are the visits by the Buddha to various localities that you often find in local chronicles (e.g. Tai state of Kengtung, Eastern Shan States). Second, there are the hagiographic accounts of Burmese kings in Burmese chronicles like U Kala's Mahayazawingyi. This includes descriptions of royal coronations (consecration, bhiseka) ceremonies that one finds in chronicle texts and religious inscriptions:
Next, Strong shows how the Buddha’s biography simultaneously reveals and reinforces the wider dimensions of Buddhist artistic production, ritual, doctrine, and history. In a series of brief sections, he describes the reciprocal relations that link the life story of the Buddha, the practice of pilgrimage, and the worship of relics Strong describes the ways in which sacred biography, art, and ritual reinforce each other.Strong discusses rituals such as the water pouring ritual accompanies many important historical events in the Burmese chronicle such as Bayinnaung's reconquest of Pegu (Hanthawaddy, Hongsa) after the Mon rebellion of 1550 that deposed Tabinshweihti.
Strong also expands the notion of biography "beyond the one-life paradigm,"not unlike Yukio Mishima's trilogy, to previous lifes by including the Jataka tradition.
Tai Lue script manuscript (NIU)
Tai Lue manuscript for reading practice
Just spotted a Tai Lue script manuscript that could be used for reading practice.Linguist John Hartmann of Northern Illinois University has put it online at his Tai Lue site together with a copy of his dissertation on the Tai Lue language.
I personally have many reasons to delve deeper into the Tai Lue script and language. 1) I've been wanting to have more meaningful conversations with my Ta Lue mother-in-law, 2) We have a lot of Tai Lue rock music videos with Tai Lue subtitles at home (long historical folk ballads too), 3) I also have a Tai Lue historical chronicle I want to read, 4) and a book of witty Tai Lue sayings and folk wisdom.
It appears that one can really kill three birds with one stone by learning how to read Tai Lue. The script is a lot like that of Tai Khuen and Tai Yuan (Lanna). Living in Chiang Rai delving deeper into Tai Yuan texts would be a logical thing to do, also the French scholar Anatole Roger Peltier has deposited a wonderful collection of Tai Khuen manuscripts in the Lanna Room (4th floor) of the Chiang Mai University's central library. My friend Peter Koret has probably delved into these. Must contact him.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Upakhut , Upagupta - Saint and Spirit
Wonderful photographs of spirit and saint Upagupta or Upakhut at Australian National University's New Mandala blog which offers a short decription:
Upakhut is an important figure in local belief in many areas of Burma, northern Thailand and Laos. The stories of his origins are numerous. (For those interested, The Legend and Cult of Upagupta by John Strong has a wealth of detail.) In Sanskrit legend he is the son of a perfume maker and one of the early followers of the Buddha. In northern Thailand, many villagers believe that Upakhut is the son of the Buddha himself. Legend has it that he was conceived when a fish ate some of the Buddha’s semen when he washed his robe (or bathed) in a river. Upakhut was born and lives in a grand palace at the bottom of the ocean. One of his key roles is to provide protection on the occasion of major Buddhist festivals (poi luang) when he is taken from the river and installed in a temporary pavilion in the temple grounds.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Inka (pre-modern macro-) Economics
"A Network Analysis of Inka Roads, Administrative Centers, and Storage Facilities," by David Jenkins, University of Arizona, Ethnohistory 48.4 (2001) 655-687: .[Extract at Economist's View]
Been ruminating over this blog entry on macroeconomics in the ancient Incan (Inkan) state from Economist's View blogfor almost a week now.
It's like sitting down all by yourself at a banquet, there's a lot there to digest, so I'm going to digest it in serial blog entry fashion.
One might even argue that serial publishing in blogs could attack a subject in bite size increments better than a full blown paper does, a point pertinent to blogging and scholarship, perhaps.
Extract One:
[This sounds a lot like the expansion of some states, especially the Burmese state, during roughly the same period, actually 1534-1581, versus the Inkan 1430-1532. The phrase "anomalous early state" indicates state-like features may have not been present. Will have to determine exactly what these are, since people have been using the notion of "state" in different ways for hundreds of years, something I address for Southeast Asian history in my recent paper. Of course, Peter Turchin at Cliodynamics has some great papers online that addresses the distinction between expansionary warfare and internal warfare (rebellion, revolt, uprising, insurgency), especially this paper.]
Been ruminating over this blog entry on macroeconomics in the ancient Incan (Inkan) state from Economist's View blogfor almost a week now.
It's like sitting down all by yourself at a banquet, there's a lot there to digest, so I'm going to digest it in serial blog entry fashion.
One might even argue that serial publishing in blogs could attack a subject in bite size increments better than a full blown paper does, a point pertinent to blogging and scholarship, perhaps.
Extract One:
Staple Finance and Wealth Finance
The Inka in the early fifteenth century were a chiefdom or perhaps an anomalous early state (Bauer 1992) of about twenty thousand people with a fairly simple social organization based on kinship ties and ruling hereditary chiefs. Initially their territory was limited, centered on what would become the city of Cuzco. Over the course of a hundred years, from about 1430 until the Spanish arrived in 1532, the Inka dramatically expanded their empire, incorporating by political maneuvering and outright conquest some eighty distinct polities into the Inka state. These conquered groups included other expansive empires, such as the highly socially stratified Chimu on the north coast, as well as small-scale states, chiefdoms, tribes, and autonomous communities scattered throughout the highlands.1[This sounds a lot like the expansion of some states, especially the Burmese state, during roughly the same period, actually 1534-1581, versus the Inkan 1430-1532. The phrase "anomalous early state" indicates state-like features may have not been present. Will have to determine exactly what these are, since people have been using the notion of "state" in different ways for hundreds of years, something I address for Southeast Asian history in my recent paper. Of course, Peter Turchin at Cliodynamics has some great papers online that addresses the distinction between expansionary warfare and internal warfare (rebellion, revolt, uprising, insurgency), especially this paper.]
Thursday, April 12, 2007
The laws of King Mangrai as myth or history? (Kirsch)
Thomas Kirsch review of: Wichienkeeo, Aroonrut and Gehan Wijeyewardene, translators and editors. The Laws of King Mangrai (Mangrayathammasart). The Wat Chang
Kham, Nan Manuscript from the Richard Davis collection. Canberra: Department of Anthropology, The Australian National University, 1986, in the Asian Folklore Studies, 1987, vol. 46 / 2 (Note: All back issues of this long-running journal appear to be online now)
This book review has a nice parry to a slightly dyspeptic Michael Vickery:
Also check out in the same journal Anthony Walker's review of: Premchit, Sommai Amphay Dore. The Lan Na Twelve-Month Traditions. Chiang Mai: Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University, 1992.
References
Grabowsky, Volker (2004). "The Northern Tai Polity of Lan Na (Babai-Dadian). Between the Late 13th to Mid-16th Centuries: Internal Dynamics and Relations with Her Neighbours, Asia Research Institute Working Paper, National University of Singapore, No. 17, January 2004. [Link]
O'Connor, Richard (1981) "Law as indigenous social theory: A Siamese Thai case," American Ethnologist 8: 223-237.
Vickery (1979) "The Lion Prince and related remarks on northern history," Journal of the Siam Society 67: 123-186.
Kham, Nan Manuscript from the Richard Davis collection. Canberra: Department of Anthropology, The Australian National University, 1986, in the Asian Folklore Studies, 1987, vol. 46 / 2 (Note: All back issues of this long-running journal appear to be online now)
This book review has a nice parry to a slightly dyspeptic Michael Vickery:
"In addition, the text might be examined for its historical contribution. In this regard, Wijeyewardene supports the caution urged recently by Vickery on the historical value of such documents. Vickery (1979: 170) sees them as a " confused mixture of fact and fancy due to people who were grossly ignorant of the facts of the past." Be that as it may, Vickery's comment suggests another perspective for these texts. If they are mixtures of fact and fancy, they might usefully be viewed from an anthropological framework: as "myth " rather than as "history." The Mangrai code, grounded in the heroic exploits of the founder King and in Buddhist dharma, evokes a Malinowskian " primeval reality " which provides a sanction and charter for the institutions of a dynamic Lanna Thai social order. Viewed as " myth," the text's facticity is irrelevant both from the perspective of the text producer and contemporary analysts. Thus, viewing this volume, we might profit from O'Connor's (1981: 224) suggestion that " law is a culturally constituted mode of analysis that projects an indigenous theory of society." As such, it must be studied symbolically as well as historically."I would care to differ on one point though. If the text is viewed as myth, i.e. as intellectual history, there is still the issue of what age or era this intellectual history belonged to. Not to ask this question is to presuppose that Lanna's intellectual history was static and unchanging (continuity dominates all change) a big assumption which needs at least to be pulled apart and investigated in further depth. A recent paper by Grabowsky attempts to tackle this sort of intellectual history, when it enumerates and analyses the causes behind the fall of Chiang Mai to the Burmese (c. 1557) given in contemporaneous interpretations of events:
"Which were the deeper causes of Lan Na’s fall that were responsible for the loss of her independence? How far can these causes be dated back? Even the contemporaries gave no rational explanation in a modern sense. They saw first of all that it was the work of the spirits and demons in taking revenge for severe violation of ritual prescriptions (NT: khĆ¼t). But economic and ecological reasons were known as well, even if they were mostly mentioned as atypical incidents. A chronicle summarises the complex causes in eleven points ...Seven out of the eleven ... causes are related to violation of ritual regulations, but Cause 4 and Cause 10 cite the unrestrained exploitation of natural resources of the land as the causal factor. The drying up of the Huai Kaeo and other flowing waters hampered the drinking water supply of the town. Moreover, the unscrupulous cutting down of the trees in the forests (deforestation) in areas further away from Chiang Mai city had upset the ecological equilibrium in the plain of the Ping river and, perhaps, also have led to a reduction in rice production." (Grabowksy, 2004, pages 27-29)The contents of the Lanna law books seems broadly similar to that of Burmese Dhammathats
"The first two sections relate to Mangrai, his accomplishments and the proclamation of his laws, " not contrary to dharma "..., thereby freeing his citizens from previously oppressive rule. ...Broadly, the initial part of the text... seems to be a circumstantial listing of offenses, varying conditions and appropriate punishments, mostly in the vernacular. The final part has a more didactic quality, consisting of parables illustrating pertinent principles and sprinkled with Pali terms."Not exactly bedtime reading, the most memorable part of my brief perusal of a version of the Mangrai Dhammasat was a long list of different adulterous situations and the legal remedies for each:
"Issues of marriage, separation, divorce, inheritance and sexual behavior seem to be most numerous. Questions of theft, liability and homicide figure prominently. Civic responsibilities, proper official conduct, the status of slaves, ritual offenses, precedence and hierarchy, counterfeiting, trespass and negligence also occur. Fines appear to be the preferred form of punishment though banishment, mutilation and execution are allowed under proper circumstances."Might be useful comparatively in the writing of social history as scholar of Burmese law Andrew Huxley suggests, particularly of the family:
"Overall, the code evokes an image of a social order grounded in Buddhist principles, hierarchically organized, but composed of individuals responsible for their actions, whose intentions and circumstances must be considered in determining the King's justice. The code is more one of restitution than of repressive sanctions."
Also check out in the same journal Anthony Walker's review of: Premchit, Sommai Amphay Dore. The Lan Na Twelve-Month Traditions. Chiang Mai: Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University, 1992.
References
Grabowsky, Volker (2004). "The Northern Tai Polity of Lan Na (Babai-Dadian). Between the Late 13th to Mid-16th Centuries: Internal Dynamics and Relations with Her Neighbours, Asia Research Institute Working Paper, National University of Singapore, No. 17, January 2004. [Link]
O'Connor, Richard (1981) "Law as indigenous social theory: A Siamese Thai case," American Ethnologist 8: 223-237.
Vickery (1979) "The Lion Prince and related remarks on northern history," Journal of the Siam Society 67: 123-186.
The Northern Group Monthly Talks (Chiang Mai)
The monthly talks help by the Northern Group in Chiang Mai are Chiang Mai's principal intellectual fare. I've only attended one, by Niels Mulder, discoursing on his scandalous and unpublishable life as a young anthropologist in Bangkok during the 1960s.
The talks are held on the second Tuesday of each month at the Alliance FranƧaise across the street from the L'Ecole d'Extreme Orient in Chiang Mai. The history of group began way back in 1972 with the short-lived Northern Thai Society modeled along the lines of the Siam Society. The current group began in 1984. There are synopses of the talks in the Meeting Diary. There is a nice summary of the presentation on Champa by Michael Vickery:
"Introduction to the history and significance of Champa"
A talk by Michael Vickery
254th meeting - Tuesday 9th November 2004
The talks are held on the second Tuesday of each month at the Alliance FranƧaise across the street from the L'Ecole d'Extreme Orient in Chiang Mai. The history of group began way back in 1972 with the short-lived Northern Thai Society modeled along the lines of the Siam Society. The current group began in 1984. There are synopses of the talks in the Meeting Diary. There is a nice summary of the presentation on Champa by Michael Vickery:
"Introduction to the history and significance of Champa"
A talk by Michael Vickery
254th meeting - Tuesday 9th November 2004
Searchable Greek inscriptions library
An searchable online library of inscriptions that might serve as an example in some respects for a library of Burmese inscriptions. Part of the Cornell Greek Epigraphy Project. There are no online translation and glossary though.
AEFEK: Association d'Echanges et de Formation pour les Etudes Khmeres
Site highlights the great amount of research that is currently being written in the French language on Khmer history and culture. Extensive bibliographies and papers freely downloadable. Like most contemporary French work, unique in showing a deep respect and appreciation for the history and traditions of historical research, as opposed to obligatory undiscerning blanket criticism of scientific method and BEFEO research as "Orientalism" [Example]. Such an association for Khmer Studies, which concentrates on Ancient Khmer history rather than contemporary politics, would be nice for Burmese history also.
Content
1. Inventories of Khmer manuscripts in French libraries [Link]
2. Lectures on Angkor and pre-Angkor (c. 1902-1930) [Link]
3. Bulletin de l'AEFEK (since 1999) [Link]
4. A page with biographies of Khmer scholars of Khmer [Link]
5. Links
Content
1. Inventories of Khmer manuscripts in French libraries [Link]
2. Lectures on Angkor and pre-Angkor (c. 1902-1930) [Link]
3. Bulletin de l'AEFEK (since 1999) [Link]
4. A page with biographies of Khmer scholars of Khmer [Link]
5. Links
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Vickery on Coedes' history of Cambodia
Vickery, Michael (2000) "Coedes' histories of Cambodia," Silpakorn University International Journal, 1, 1: 61-108, cited in Baker, Chris (2003) "Ayutthaya Rising: From Land or Sea?," Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 34 (1), pp. 41-62 February 2003. [Sadly, the only paper I can find citing it]
I bought Coedes' The Indianized States of Southeast Asia (1968) a long, long time ago and subsequently lost it and really didn't miss it much at all.
I bumped into it again recently and was quite impressed by its regional approach to history during the Mongol era (c. 1250-1350)(Luce, 1958, 1959). It seemed, to my undiscerning eye, to be striving for some overall cross-regional coherence in the interpretation of this period. It even seemed to me that Vickery might have been adulating Coedes regional perspective, based on the following quote:
Then it came as quite a surprise to me to find that Vickery had written a whole paper on Coedes where he picked him apart, albeit mercifully, and exposed his faults. So I am beginning to do what I vowed to do (after my work at the newspaper each day):
There seems to be an essence of methodology for dealing with the socio-cultural dimensions of inscriptional evidence in Vickery's work that is applicable to the Burmese history of the Ava period (c. 1364-1555) (that I am working on) as well. There is a wealth of admonitions about the way that sources should and should not be used from a scientific standpoint. The inscriptional evidence should probably in some sense provide a foundation or infrastructure for the abundant chronicle evidence for the Ava period.
I know the word "scientific" would make the more deconstructionist historians bristle with contempt and horror, but Vickery’s work, though based firmly on traditional Rankean "what actually happened" or "the way it actually was" also admits that historical sources are contingent artifacts of their creators that makes historical interpretation for many periods intrinsically indeterminate.
Vickery likes science. He notes, that new information must be integrated and our theories adjusted, even if it forces a change in our preconceptions. (Vickery, 2000, 102) One can even entertain more than one theory, Vickery often does, ranking them relative to their likelihood. This is a Bayesian model of science.
Narrative history can also be adjusted. There is no real reason for narrative history to be a mere linear rendition of battles from the perspective of one court. Braudel by layering history into levels of short-term to long-term causal factors (infrastructure; structure – economics, politics, social organisation; superstructure, see Ferguson, 1998) provides a framework for writing thick history in the sense of Geertz’s thick descriptio, thick narratives of events, thick in the sense that background information about economics, politics, culture, and social organisation are interleaved with the narrative.
Vickery holds that students should be "introduced directly to the primary sources, rather than having to guess at what they record via the interpretation of Coedes [general history]." Translation accompanied by critical assessments and annotations need to be valorized above historical interpretations. “I refer to Coedes but teach original sources," he notes.
The fact that Burmese history still relies on Harvey (1925) and Phayre (19th century) is quite sad. Vickery makes a distinction between "academic works" and "popularizations."
He provides an example of over-synthesis from the history of Funan (page 71-72) that I will have to untangle in the future. Remarking of Coedes' books:
No doubt, he would find my attempts at synthesis too thin on the critical side. Vickery’s work certainly provides an abundant corpus of examples of source criticism. His magnum opus (Vickery, 1998) is the best place to begin.
References:
Coedes, George (1968) The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. [Google Books]
Ferguson, Brian R (1999). "A Paradigm for the Study of War and Society," cited in Raaflaub, Kurt and Nathan Rubinstein (eds.). (1999). War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Asia, The Mediterranean, Europe, and Mesoamerica, Center
for Hellenic Studies. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Luce, Gordon Hannington (1958). "The Early Syam in Burma’s History." Journal of the Siam Society 46 (1958): 123-214.
Luce, Gordon Hannington (1959). "The Early Syam in Burma’s History: A Supplement." Journal of the Siam Society 47.1 (1959): 59-101.
Vickery, Michael (1998) Society, Economics, and Politics in pre-Angkor Cambodia, Tokyo: Toyo Bunko."
Vickery, Michael (2004) "Cambodia and Its Neighbors in the 15th Century," ARI Working Paper No. 27, June 2004, www.ari.nus.edu.sg/pub/wps.htm.
I bought Coedes' The Indianized States of Southeast Asia (1968) a long, long time ago and subsequently lost it and really didn't miss it much at all.
I bumped into it again recently and was quite impressed by its regional approach to history during the Mongol era (c. 1250-1350)(Luce, 1958, 1959). It seemed, to my undiscerning eye, to be striving for some overall cross-regional coherence in the interpretation of this period. It even seemed to me that Vickery might have been adulating Coedes regional perspective, based on the following quote:
"In studying the Hsien-Ayutthaya-Martaban-Pegu-central northern Menampolities and the relations between Ayutthaya and Cambodia, it might be helpful to bracket out entirely conceptions of modern boundaries and think rather of an area of ancient common cosmopolitan culture and constantly shifting alliances." (Vickery,2004, 23-24)
Then it came as quite a surprise to me to find that Vickery had written a whole paper on Coedes where he picked him apart, albeit mercifully, and exposed his faults. So I am beginning to do what I vowed to do (after my work at the newspaper each day):
Start systematizing Vickery's approach to the socio-cultural imformation embedded in inscriptions and apply them to Burmese history.
There seems to be an essence of methodology for dealing with the socio-cultural dimensions of inscriptional evidence in Vickery's work that is applicable to the Burmese history of the Ava period (c. 1364-1555) (that I am working on) as well. There is a wealth of admonitions about the way that sources should and should not be used from a scientific standpoint. The inscriptional evidence should probably in some sense provide a foundation or infrastructure for the abundant chronicle evidence for the Ava period.
I know the word "scientific" would make the more deconstructionist historians bristle with contempt and horror, but Vickery’s work, though based firmly on traditional Rankean "what actually happened" or "the way it actually was" also admits that historical sources are contingent artifacts of their creators that makes historical interpretation for many periods intrinsically indeterminate.
Vickery likes science. He notes, that new information must be integrated and our theories adjusted, even if it forces a change in our preconceptions. (Vickery, 2000, 102) One can even entertain more than one theory, Vickery often does, ranking them relative to their likelihood. This is a Bayesian model of science.
Narrative history can also be adjusted. There is no real reason for narrative history to be a mere linear rendition of battles from the perspective of one court. Braudel by layering history into levels of short-term to long-term causal factors (infrastructure; structure – economics, politics, social organisation; superstructure, see Ferguson, 1998) provides a framework for writing thick history in the sense of Geertz’s thick descriptio, thick narratives of events, thick in the sense that background information about economics, politics, culture, and social organisation are interleaved with the narrative.
Vickery holds that students should be "introduced directly to the primary sources, rather than having to guess at what they record via the interpretation of Coedes [general history]." Translation accompanied by critical assessments and annotations need to be valorized above historical interpretations. “I refer to Coedes but teach original sources," he notes.
The fact that Burmese history still relies on Harvey (1925) and Phayre (19th century) is quite sad. Vickery makes a distinction between "academic works" and "popularizations."
"…popular treatments …should present, in non-specialist language for the general literate public, the results of the best scientific work. They should not simply seek to entertain or be vehicles for speculative reconstructions which would not past muster if presented the same way in an academic journal." (63)
He provides an example of over-synthesis from the history of Funan (page 71-72) that I will have to untangle in the future. Remarking of Coedes' books:
"They are monuments of uncritical synthesisation, some of which belongs in historical romance, not in history. Coedes was a great synthesizer – indeed that may have been his greatest talent when functioning as a writer of historical accounts; and he had to find, or imagine, a connection between every detail and some other detail in time and place." (63)
"The problem was in assumptions and presuppositions, not in any lack of sources. Coedes’ historical syntheses, which were the basis for most subsequent work, including Soviet studies, contains defects which were of course not because he was unaware of the content of the inscriptions, but because of the theoretical framework, possibly unconscious, which he imposed on them. This was a view in which history genealogical, narrowly political, and narrative, and it would not be sufficient, in fact, it would probably be impossible, to extract the additional information from the inscriptions in a coherent manner without a new theoretical framework." (64)
No doubt, he would find my attempts at synthesis too thin on the critical side. Vickery’s work certainly provides an abundant corpus of examples of source criticism. His magnum opus (Vickery, 1998) is the best place to begin.
References:
Coedes, George (1968) The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. [Google Books]
Ferguson, Brian R (1999). "A Paradigm for the Study of War and Society," cited in Raaflaub, Kurt and Nathan Rubinstein (eds.). (1999). War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds: Asia, The Mediterranean, Europe, and Mesoamerica, Center
for Hellenic Studies. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Luce, Gordon Hannington (1958). "The Early Syam in Burma’s History." Journal of the Siam Society 46 (1958): 123-214.
Luce, Gordon Hannington (1959). "The Early Syam in Burma’s History: A Supplement." Journal of the Siam Society 47.1 (1959): 59-101.
Vickery, Michael (1998) Society, Economics, and Politics in pre-Angkor Cambodia, Tokyo: Toyo Bunko."
Vickery, Michael (2004) "Cambodia and Its Neighbors in the 15th Century," ARI Working Paper No. 27, June 2004, www.ari.nus.edu.sg/pub/wps.htm.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Bertil Lintner takes Susan Conway's new to task on "Shan" history
Conway, Susan (2006) The Shan: Culture, Arts, and Crafts, River Books, Bangkok. [Lintner's Review]
The book excels when it covers the author's areas of expertise:
But falls short in the areas of history:
Bertil Linter also whets the readers appetite with tidbits of a topic that has yet to be delved into by historians yet (that I'm aware of) the Kachin expansion into region north of Upper Burma, the modern day Kachin State. The Kachins "migrated less than 300 years ago into the northern parts of what today is Burma, and, according to Ola Hansson, the Swedish-American missionary who managed to convert many Kachins to Christianity and gave them a written language:
The book excels when it covers the author's areas of expertise:
"Conway’s chapters about Shan weaving and dyeing, embroidery, lacquer ware, Shan genealogy and Buddha images, as well as her detailed notes about Shan script and palm leaf manuscripts are extremely informative. Conway also describes in great detail the patterns and meanings of Shan tattoos. So don’t be discouraged by the book’s shortcomings. If you ignore the historical and ethnological parts it’s well worth reading."
But falls short in the areas of history:
"...the Shan do not refer to themselves as Tai Yai—they call themselves Tai, which in China is romanized as Dai. Thaiyai, not Tai Yai, is the name given to them by their ethnic Thai cousins in Thailand who traditionally have believed that the Shan were their ancestors (yai means big or great.)
"Kachin chiefs did nor rule Hkamti Long, which was a Shan state in the Kachin-dominated area of the far north of Burma. The Shan state of Yawnghwe is not “called Nyaungshwe by the Shan and Yawnghwe by the Burmese.” It is the other way round. Yawnghwe is Shan for the valley, or gorge of rice storages. Nyaungshwe is simply a Burmese corruption of the Shan name.
Bertil Linter also whets the readers appetite with tidbits of a topic that has yet to be delved into by historians yet (that I'm aware of) the Kachin expansion into region north of Upper Burma, the modern day Kachin State. The Kachins "migrated less than 300 years ago into the northern parts of what today is Burma, and, according to Ola Hansson, the Swedish-American missionary who managed to convert many Kachins to Christianity and gave them a written language:
“Having obtained a foothold, the conquest of the whole region between the Khamti (Hkamti) and Hukong (Hukawng) valleys, as far south as to the Mogaung river, followed in due time. The Shans and Burmans were driven out, and only the ruins of their pagodas, the trees planted around their monasteries, and the names of their villages remained to tell the story of fierce fighting and wholesale slaughter.”
"The southward movement of the Kachin was halted only when the British colonial power began to subdue the area in the late 19th century. Thus, the question of ethnicity in Burma is not merely, or simply, about the majority Burmans versus the country’s plethora of minorities. Age-old divisions and conflicts also exist between the various non-Burman nationalities, which makes the ethnic issue in Burma far more complex than most foreign analysts assume, and a solution much harder to find than just referring to “the struggle against greater-Burman hegemonism,” as many of the leaders of the minorities often do.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
What philology means to some people
Thomas, Richard G. (2006) "Philology in Viet Nam and its Impact on Southeast Asian Cultural History," Modern Asian Studies, 40, 2, pp. 477-515.
The above paper reads like a witch hunt.
It claims there are problems with the work of the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient and several historians including Michael Vickery, but presents absolutely no evidence to support its contention. The paper merely hurls grandiouse accusations, like this one:
Not even a citation of a page!
First of all, the sort of philology that historians like Michael Vickery employ has been the standard historical methodology used since the time of Ranke. It is the same sort of methodology that one finds in the Warring States Project at University of Massachusetts at Amherst, for instance.
A sceptical Rankean approach towards sources with an eye towards finding "what actually happened" is, of course, not the only possible legitimate goal. Historical texts can be appreciated as literature also, the authors of each subsequent text borrowing from previous authors.
It is worth taking a closer look at the Vickery quote above:
1. western scientists who cling to the notion that the relationship between signifier and signified is not arbitrary
[If it was arbitrary, it would be meaningless. People compose and interpret texts with intentions which are not arbitrary.]
3. That the truth of Southeast Asian archaeology can be grasped in its entirety by the application of hard-nosed philological principles.
[Who claims anything can be grasped in its entirety? What Vickery does is hypothesise about the processes that might have been involved in the creation of a text. We are free to disagree with him and present reasons why we disagree.
Philological tools are what one uses to make sense of the way historical texts were constructed from initial authoring through hundreds of years of subsequent copying.
Initially, hypotheses should be stated clearly and without a lot of qualifications. Later on, if the hypothesis does not hold up under the evidence, the hypothesis is qualified. One thing is for sure, the writer of the above does not look at any of the relevant evidence for the claims they are making, namely the actual methods used by actual historians like Vickery.]
Apparently, the reason it was published was that it claimed to be a rebuttal to a previous work which it claims:
I leave you with one last quote:
First of all, if translations of texts from non-western cultures and histories were valued more by western academia, then non-western could be contemplated and appreciated more, but finding the universal in the particular does not in itself devalue the particular.
Or this very strange sentence that requres the reader to take an excursion into the very convolutions of the author's brain:
People like Coedes collected and preserved huge amounts of linguistic, inscriptional, and art historical data. They studied this material in detail and published prolifically. Something that most contemporary scholars don't seem to be able to get up the will power to do. Like Vickery deserve to at least have their work looked at in detail before subjecting it to criticism.
The above paper reads like a witch hunt.
It claims there are problems with the work of the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient and several historians including Michael Vickery, but presents absolutely no evidence to support its contention. The paper merely hurls grandiouse accusations, like this one:
"...those western scientists who cling to the notion that the relationship between signifier and signified is not arbitrary, and therefore that the truth of Southeast Asian archaeology can be grasped in its entirety by the application of hard-nosed philological principles. (98)..."
"98) M Vickery, Society, Economics, and Politics in pre-Angkor Cambodia (Tokyo, 1998)"
Not even a citation of a page!
First of all, the sort of philology that historians like Michael Vickery employ has been the standard historical methodology used since the time of Ranke. It is the same sort of methodology that one finds in the Warring States Project at University of Massachusetts at Amherst, for instance.
A sceptical Rankean approach towards sources with an eye towards finding "what actually happened" is, of course, not the only possible legitimate goal. Historical texts can be appreciated as literature also, the authors of each subsequent text borrowing from previous authors.
It is worth taking a closer look at the Vickery quote above:
1. western scientists who cling to the notion that the relationship between signifier and signified is not arbitrary
[If it was arbitrary, it would be meaningless. People compose and interpret texts with intentions which are not arbitrary.]
3. That the truth of Southeast Asian archaeology can be grasped in its entirety by the application of hard-nosed philological principles.
[Who claims anything can be grasped in its entirety? What Vickery does is hypothesise about the processes that might have been involved in the creation of a text. We are free to disagree with him and present reasons why we disagree.
Philological tools are what one uses to make sense of the way historical texts were constructed from initial authoring through hundreds of years of subsequent copying.
Initially, hypotheses should be stated clearly and without a lot of qualifications. Later on, if the hypothesis does not hold up under the evidence, the hypothesis is qualified. One thing is for sure, the writer of the above does not look at any of the relevant evidence for the claims they are making, namely the actual methods used by actual historians like Vickery.]
Apparently, the reason it was published was that it claimed to be a rebuttal to a previous work which it claims:
"The research [sic] presented here questions Bayly's suggestion that the scholarly output of the EFEO provided positive influences for the thought patterns of young revolutionary Vietnamese intellectuals in their struggle to overthrow the colonial regime." (page 478)
I leave you with one last quote:
"Like Alexander, who showed his love of Pindar, the philologist denied the existence of anything of cultural value in Indo-China except Indo-European culture."
First of all, if translations of texts from non-western cultures and histories were valued more by western academia, then non-western could be contemplated and appreciated more, but finding the universal in the particular does not in itself devalue the particular.
Or this very strange sentence that requres the reader to take an excursion into the very convolutions of the author's brain:
Whether all of them were aware of it or not, the professional philological scientists who worked in Southeast Asia were involved in an experimental project whose goal was to redefine Orientalism as a scientific form of Hellenism." (498)
People like Coedes collected and preserved huge amounts of linguistic, inscriptional, and art historical data. They studied this material in detail and published prolifically. Something that most contemporary scholars don't seem to be able to get up the will power to do. Like Vickery deserve to at least have their work looked at in detail before subjecting it to criticism.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Sealang.net for Burmese language dictionary and corpus
Includes a Burmese language corpus and dictionary. They are starting to put the papers of the great historian of Burma G.H. Luce online. Right now only the papers regarding Mon linguistics are online.
As far as the language of historical texts goes, the emphasis is on the language of inscriptions in the SEAclassics project (often difficult to figure out, requireing specialised dictionaries):
Don't forget to read the intro for students before you begin
As far as the language of historical texts goes, the emphasis is on the language of inscriptions in the SEAclassics project (often difficult to figure out, requireing specialised dictionaries):
"Southeast Asia's golden age of epigraphy spans more than a millennium, from the 5th through the 15th centuries. The SEAclassics Library of epigraphic texts, Indic and epigraphic dictionaries, and research-oriented software tools will make this widely scattered body of work, including the Cham, Mon, Khmer, Pyu, Burmese, and Tai inscriptional corpora, accessible to the international scholarly community. A demonstration of the Corpus of Khmer Inscriptions is available on line."
Don't forget to read the intro for students before you begin
Topographical Maps for Burma-Yunnan border area
Highly detailed topographical maps for Burma and Yunnan:
1. China and Yunnan
Mong Mao is on this map. This set of maps is certainly in need of a better index. Will have to work on one myself. A better map reader than internet explorer's zoom capbility is needed too. Would be nice to make a more detailed map than Wade's Ming Shi-lu map that shows the role that topography played in history.
2. Burma
Maps:
NC 47-2 Bokpyin (4.4 MB)
NC 47-6 Kra Buri (4.6 MB)
ND 46-4 Ama (3.9 MB)
ND 47-2 Ye (6.2 MB)
ND 47-6 Tavoy (5.8 MB)
ND 47-10 Palauk 1959 ed. (5.8 MB)
ND 47-10 Palauk 1962 ed. (4.9 MB)
ND 47-14 Mergui (4.6 MB)
NE 46-3 Kyaukpyu (6.5 MB)
NE 46-4 Thayetmyo (6.6 MB)
NE 46-7 Sandoway (5.0 MB)
NE 46-8 Prome (6.9 MB)
NE 46-12 Henzada (6.6 MB)
NE 46-15 Sinma (3.8 MB)
NE 46-16 Bassein (6.3 MB)
NE 46-16 Bassein and Vicinity [verso] (961K)
NE 47-1 Pyinmana (6.9 MB)
NE 47-5 Toungoo (6.8 MB)
NE 47-9 Pegu (6.3 MB)
NE 47-13 Rangoon (5.6 MB)
NE 47-13 Rangoon and Vicinity [verso] (1.1 MB)
NE 47-14 Moulmein (6.2 MB)
NF 46-3 Mawlaik (6.5 MB)
NF 46-4 Wuntho (6.4 MB)
NF 46-7 Gangaw (6.2 MB)
NF 46-8 Shwebo (5.9 MB)
NF 46-10 Cox's Bazar (5.9 MB)
NF 46-11 Mount Victoria (6.4 MB)
NF 46-12 Myingyin (5.7 MB)
NF 46-14 Akyab (4.1 MB)
NF 46-15 Myohaung (6.6 MB)
NF 46-16 Yenangyaung (6.1 MB)
NF 47-1 Mong Mit (6.6 MB)
NF 47-2 Hsenwi (6.4 MB)
NF 47-5 Maymyo (6.4 MB)
NF 47-6 Mong Yai (6.5 MB)
NF 47-9 Mandalay (6.3 MB)
NF 47-9 Mandalay, Burma and Vicinity [verso] (1.6 MB)
NF 47-10 Lai-Hka (6.2 MB)
NF 47-11 Keng Tung (6.7 MB)
NF 47-11 reliability diagram, notes, glossary [verso] (1.1 MB)
NF 47-13 Yamethin (6.4 MB)
NF 47-14 Mong Pan (6.7 MB)
NG 46-8 Sibsagar (5.7 MB)
NG 46-12 Tamanthi (5.4 MB)
NG 46-16 Paungbyin (5.9 MB)
NG 47-1 Putao (6.1 MB)
NG 47-5 Maingkwan (5.9 MB)
NG 47-9 Myitkyina (5.9 MB)
NG 47-13 Bhamo (5.9 MB)
1. China and Yunnan
Mong Mao is on this map. This set of maps is certainly in need of a better index. Will have to work on one myself. A better map reader than internet explorer's zoom capbility is needed too. Would be nice to make a more detailed map than Wade's Ming Shi-lu map that shows the role that topography played in history.
2. Burma
Maps:
NC 47-2 Bokpyin (4.4 MB)
NC 47-6 Kra Buri (4.6 MB)
ND 46-4 Ama (3.9 MB)
ND 47-2 Ye (6.2 MB)
ND 47-6 Tavoy (5.8 MB)
ND 47-10 Palauk 1959 ed. (5.8 MB)
ND 47-10 Palauk 1962 ed. (4.9 MB)
ND 47-14 Mergui (4.6 MB)
NE 46-3 Kyaukpyu (6.5 MB)
NE 46-4 Thayetmyo (6.6 MB)
NE 46-7 Sandoway (5.0 MB)
NE 46-8 Prome (6.9 MB)
NE 46-12 Henzada (6.6 MB)
NE 46-15 Sinma (3.8 MB)
NE 46-16 Bassein (6.3 MB)
NE 46-16 Bassein and Vicinity [verso] (961K)
NE 47-1 Pyinmana (6.9 MB)
NE 47-5 Toungoo (6.8 MB)
NE 47-9 Pegu (6.3 MB)
NE 47-13 Rangoon (5.6 MB)
NE 47-13 Rangoon and Vicinity [verso] (1.1 MB)
NE 47-14 Moulmein (6.2 MB)
NF 46-3 Mawlaik (6.5 MB)
NF 46-4 Wuntho (6.4 MB)
NF 46-7 Gangaw (6.2 MB)
NF 46-8 Shwebo (5.9 MB)
NF 46-10 Cox's Bazar (5.9 MB)
NF 46-11 Mount Victoria (6.4 MB)
NF 46-12 Myingyin (5.7 MB)
NF 46-14 Akyab (4.1 MB)
NF 46-15 Myohaung (6.6 MB)
NF 46-16 Yenangyaung (6.1 MB)
NF 47-1 Mong Mit (6.6 MB)
NF 47-2 Hsenwi (6.4 MB)
NF 47-5 Maymyo (6.4 MB)
NF 47-6 Mong Yai (6.5 MB)
NF 47-9 Mandalay (6.3 MB)
NF 47-9 Mandalay, Burma and Vicinity [verso] (1.6 MB)
NF 47-10 Lai-Hka (6.2 MB)
NF 47-11 Keng Tung (6.7 MB)
NF 47-11 reliability diagram, notes, glossary [verso] (1.1 MB)
NF 47-13 Yamethin (6.4 MB)
NF 47-14 Mong Pan (6.7 MB)
NG 46-8 Sibsagar (5.7 MB)
NG 46-12 Tamanthi (5.4 MB)
NG 46-16 Paungbyin (5.9 MB)
NG 47-1 Putao (6.1 MB)
NG 47-5 Maingkwan (5.9 MB)
NG 47-9 Myitkyina (5.9 MB)
NG 47-13 Bhamo (5.9 MB)
Pictures of new Myanmar capital Nay-pyi-daw
Pictures of the new Burmese capital Naypyidaw are to be found in the pages of a blog authored by the deputy editor of the Indian newspaper named The Hindu, Sidharth Varadarajan.
The buildings bear an uncanny resemblance to Mae Fah Luang University in Chiang Rai, Thailand that I taught at for two years, a university that was built by squatter camps full of Burmese migrant workers, by the way.
Varadarajan's blog also has a section devoted to Myanmar.
The buildings bear an uncanny resemblance to Mae Fah Luang University in Chiang Rai, Thailand that I taught at for two years, a university that was built by squatter camps full of Burmese migrant workers, by the way.
Varadarajan's blog also has a section devoted to Myanmar.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Money in Yunnan during the Ming (c. 1350-1600)
Macroeconomics in pre-modern southeast Asian economies besides lacking data can also be quite conceptually complex. Take Yunnan, for instance. Several currencies existed, yet markets hardly existed. The currencies included:
Stylized facts provide some hints about the role markets and money played in Yunnan:
What was happening with all these moneys is an open historical question and requires getting back to fundamental intuitions about the function of money that Brad DeLong touched upon in his blog recently:
Sam Brittan writes:
Ha! I'm going to tell you whether you want me to tell you or not!
There are three possibilities. The check could serve as an expansion of the real money supply, if it is sufficiently easier to carry around and keep track of then previous moneys--previous markers of claims to purchasing power. If so, then nobody pays for the traveller's meal: the traveller's writing the check increased social wealth by more than the resources consumed, and everybody is better off. It is a free lunch.
A second possibility is that the check--being easier to carry around and keep track of--could crowd out and displace some other asset used as money. Say that the nominal (and real) money supplies remain fixed, and that the circulation of the check means that somebody loses their job stringing cowrie shells together, and has to get another lower-paying lower-value job doing something else. In this case, part of the lunch is paid for by the dismissed worker who loses his or her best opportunity. The rest of the lunch, however, is still free.
A third possibility, however, is that the check increases the nominal but not the real money supply. People are happy to hold the check, but the check is no easier to use than other forms of money, which are in fixed supply. In this case the price level rises, and everybody else with money in their pockets finds that their money buys less. In this case their is no free lunch: the lunch is paid for by an inflation tax implicitly levied on other money holders.
Those are the three possible answers. There will be a test.[Source]
Brook, Timothy "The Merchant Network in 16th Century China: A discussion and translation of Zhang Han’s 'On Merchants'," Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. XXIV, Part II, pages 165-214.
Sun, Laichen (2000). Ming-Southeast Asian overland interactions, c. 1368-1644. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan.
Vogel, Hans Ulrich (1993). "Cowry trade and its role in the economy of Yunnan: From the ninth to the mid-seventeenth century," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 36, 3 (1993): 211-252; 36, 4 (1993): 309-353.
Wade, Geoff. tr (2005). Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu: an open access resource, Singapore: Asia Research Institute and the Singapore E-Press, National
University of Singapore, [http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl]
1. The Ming emperor injecting paper money into the economy with the money he gives to the tribute missions of different ethnic groups to the capital. Can be seen in the tribute entries of Wade's (2005) translation of the Ming Shi-lu.
2. The longstanding use of cowries imported from the south until the 1700s. Covered in the work of Vogel (1993).
3. Most importantly silver produced in Yunnan and used throughout China. Covered in detail in Sun Lai-chen's (2000) dissertation.
4. Copper cash also, probably.
Stylized facts provide some hints about the role markets and money played in Yunnan:
"Yunnan has peaks upon peaks of mountain ranges and swift gorges winding through them. In the central region where the capital is, the land is well-watered and abounds in food-stuffs. This place does not rely on merchants, yet merchants gather here because it is a place where cinnabar, red mercury, glittering stones, and precious stones are produced. The lands of Linan, Dali, Yongning, Heqing, and Chuxiong can claim to be fertile, but the merchants are extremely few. Such places as Yuanjiang, Lincang, Yongchang, and Lijiang border on foreign territories; their customs are contrary and different." (Brook, 203)
“Comment: The long and difficult routes from Yunnan to the rest of China made the transport of anything but lightweight luxuries prohibitive. Yunnan was an important source of gems, and there were heavy proscriptions against non-imperial trading in gems with the local people (footnote 35: The involvement in eunuchs in this trade is mentioned in the biography of Wang Shu in the Dictionary of Ming Biography)” (Brook, 203-204)
What was happening with all these moneys is an open historical question and requires getting back to fundamental intuitions about the function of money that Brad DeLong touched upon in his blog recently:
Sam Brittan writes:
FT.com / Columnists / Samuel Brittan - Money is making a comeback: Any IoU that is accepted in payment for services rendered can be regarded as money. There is a legendary exam question about a traveller who paid for a meal on a remote island by cheque. The natives were so impressed by this strange piece of paper that they passed it from hand to hand without anyone attempting to cash it. Who then paid for the traveller’s meal? (Please don’t tell me)...
Ha! I'm going to tell you whether you want me to tell you or not!
There are three possibilities. The check could serve as an expansion of the real money supply, if it is sufficiently easier to carry around and keep track of then previous moneys--previous markers of claims to purchasing power. If so, then nobody pays for the traveller's meal: the traveller's writing the check increased social wealth by more than the resources consumed, and everybody is better off. It is a free lunch.
A second possibility is that the check--being easier to carry around and keep track of--could crowd out and displace some other asset used as money. Say that the nominal (and real) money supplies remain fixed, and that the circulation of the check means that somebody loses their job stringing cowrie shells together, and has to get another lower-paying lower-value job doing something else. In this case, part of the lunch is paid for by the dismissed worker who loses his or her best opportunity. The rest of the lunch, however, is still free.
A third possibility, however, is that the check increases the nominal but not the real money supply. People are happy to hold the check, but the check is no easier to use than other forms of money, which are in fixed supply. In this case the price level rises, and everybody else with money in their pockets finds that their money buys less. In this case their is no free lunch: the lunch is paid for by an inflation tax implicitly levied on other money holders.
Those are the three possible answers. There will be a test.[Source]
References
Brook, Timothy "The Merchant Network in 16th Century China: A discussion and translation of Zhang Han’s 'On Merchants'," Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. XXIV, Part II, pages 165-214.
Sun, Laichen (2000). Ming-Southeast Asian overland interactions, c. 1368-1644. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan.
Vogel, Hans Ulrich (1993). "Cowry trade and its role in the economy of Yunnan: From the ninth to the mid-seventeenth century," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 36, 3 (1993): 211-252; 36, 4 (1993): 309-353.
Wade, Geoff. tr (2005). Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu: an open access resource, Singapore: Asia Research Institute and the Singapore E-Press, National
University of Singapore, [http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl]
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Suhkothai history's relevance for Mon history of Lower Burma
Looking beyond the contemporary nation state is important in writing pre-modern history. That the pre-modern state of Burma was very different from modern states of the 19th and 20th centuries is obvious. Limitations of communication and transportation over inhospitable terrain (with horses, elephants, and footpaths) made political control more difficult in pre-modern eras. This meant that the area of effective direct rule was a lot less and that remoter areas of indirect rule often had dual allegiances to the larger states around them. Despite this geographical separation of peoples, ideas and religious practices spread slowly but surely across regional boundaries.
Last weekend I found a thread of Thai history that touches upon Mon history in Lower Burma via the inscriptional and chronicle history of Sukhothai. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara (1972,40-44) has a long discussion about the founding of Martaban and how Ramannadesa [Mon Kingdom] was "tributary" to Sukhothai citing Rajadhirat texts and the Mulasasana. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara(1975, 41) which has a good overview of Sukhothai history covering all the kings. There certainly seems to be a clear intellectual genealogy from Coedes to Griswold and Prasert na Nagara to Vickery. They are all dealing with the same issues and Vickery seems to be going back to Coedes's more regional approach:
He poses some textual issues that have yet to be resolved:
I would just like to note that the period in question was a period of continual endemic warfare, so the fact that both of the two kings above were both engaged in warfare is not really that exceptional, rather something to be expected.
References
Coedes, George (1968) The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. [Google Books]
Griswold, A. B. and Prasert na Nagara (1975) "On Kingship and Society at Sukhodaya," In Change and Persistence in Thai Society, ed. by William Skinner and A. Thomas Kirsch, 29-92. Ithaca and London : Cornell University Press.
Griswold, A.B. and Prasert Na Nagara (1972) "King Lodaiya of Sukhodaya and his contemporaries, Epigraphic and historical studies, no. 10," Journal of the Siam Society.
Vickery, Michael (2004) "Cambodia and Its Neighbors in the 15th Century," ARI Working Paper No. 27, June 2004, www.ari.nus.edu.sg/pub/wps.htm.
Last weekend I found a thread of Thai history that touches upon Mon history in Lower Burma via the inscriptional and chronicle history of Sukhothai. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara (1972,40-44) has a long discussion about the founding of Martaban and how Ramannadesa [Mon Kingdom] was "tributary" to Sukhothai citing Rajadhirat texts and the Mulasasana. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara(1975, 41) which has a good overview of Sukhothai history covering all the kings. There certainly seems to be a clear intellectual genealogy from Coedes to Griswold and Prasert na Nagara to Vickery. They are all dealing with the same issues and Vickery seems to be going back to Coedes's more regional approach:
"In studying the Hsien-Ayutthaya-Martaban-Pegu-central northern Menampolities and the relations between Ayutthaya and Cambodia, it might be helpful to bracket out entirely conceptions of modern boundaries and think rather of an area of ancient common cosmopolitan culture and constantly shifting alliances." (Vickery,2004, 23-24)
He poses some textual issues that have yet to be resolved:
"There too, a certain Baą¹a U was ruler in Martaban and moved from there to establish a new dynasty in Pegu just about the same time as Uthong was active inAyudhya, and in some versions this occurred in 1369, also a year of important change in Ayutthaya. Just like the Uthong of Ayudhyan history, he is supposed to have comefrom a provincial town, or former capital, to found what would henceforth be a new political center for his people. According to one Mon chronicle,78 his reign was 19 years like that of Uthong-Ramadhipati, although at slightly different dates (1364-1383), and he was also followed by a king entitled rajadhiraj, although a son, rather than a brother or brother-in-law, who, like the first Param Rajadhiraj of Ayudhya, was involved in a long series of campaigns against rivals to the north. This suggests that the foundation stories in both the Mon and Ayutthayan chronicles derive from a common origin, or have contaminated one another." (Vickery, 2004, 23)
I would just like to note that the period in question was a period of continual endemic warfare, so the fact that both of the two kings above were both engaged in warfare is not really that exceptional, rather something to be expected.
References
Coedes, George (1968) The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. [Google Books]
Griswold, A. B. and Prasert na Nagara (1975) "On Kingship and Society at Sukhodaya," In Change and Persistence in Thai Society, ed. by William Skinner and A. Thomas Kirsch, 29-92. Ithaca and London : Cornell University Press.
Griswold, A.B. and Prasert Na Nagara (1972) "King Lodaiya of Sukhodaya and his contemporaries, Epigraphic and historical studies, no. 10," Journal of the Siam Society.
Vickery, Michael (2004) "Cambodia and Its Neighbors in the 15th Century," ARI Working Paper No. 27, June 2004, www.ari.nus.edu.sg/pub/wps.htm.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Michael Vickery's Cambodia And Its Neighbors In The 15th Century (2004)
Vickery, Michael (2004) "Cambodia And Its Neighbors In The 15th Century," Working Paper, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (2003)
June 2004, [pdf]
This working paper by historian Michael Vickery touches upon the Mon history of Lower Burma of the 13th-14th centuries. It is also worth readin, like all his works, for the methodology and examples of critical questions to ask of sources.
Abstract:
Cambodia’s 15th century is nearly a blank page: no inscriptions, insignificant architecture, largely fictional chronicles, and little information in the records of other countries. But we may assume that processes similar to what may be ascertained in other parts of Southeast Asia were at work: changes in state formation, shift of political centers, growth of maritime trade and concomitant decline of ruling groups based in agriculture.
To make sense of the ‘Ming Factor’ in Cambodia’s 15th century we must start with the 12th-century ‘Sung Factor’ when the Sung began to encourage direct Chinese participation in overseas trade, leading to changes in the Southeast Asian countries involved. In Cambodia this is reflected in the 12th-century Cambodian attempts to conquer the coast of Champa with its good ports at the same time as relations with China increased.
The Chinese envoy Chou Ta-kuan in 1296 reported a recent war between Angkor and Hsien/Sien on the Gulf coastal area of Thailand which may well have been rivalry over control of the coasts, prefiguring the Ayutthaya-Cambodia rivalry of later centuries. Cambodia’s growing importance in this area is seen in the sudden increase of Chinese records of trade and diplomatic contact between the 1370s and mid-15th century, at the same time as similar developments with Hsien/Ayutthaya.
This implicit rivalry in trade with China may have been an element in the war of mid-15th century during which Ayutthaya occupied Angkor for more than a decade until expelled by Cambodians who moved their political center to the Phnom Penh region, an excellent river port area.
Because of the lack of other documentation for Cambodia, the Chinese records of contact are very important. The titles and royal names in the Ming shi-lu in particular reflect changes in Cambodian royal traditions under the influence of Ayutthaya, at the same time as Ayutthayan royal traditions were changing through relations with the north central Thai polities of Sukhothai, Phitsanulok and Kamphaeng Phetch, and with Chiang Mai in the far North.
In this paper I compare the genuine contemporary titles of these polities from the 12th century to the fifteenth as seen in inscriptions, when they exist, and the titles recorded in Chinese records from the 13th century through the 15th, in particular the abundance of such records in MSL. This demonstrates changes in relative status among these polities, as they developed economies based on sea trade.
The paper ends with study of the single chronicle which seems to provide accurate detail of political events in Cambodia in mid-15th century, and of special relations between Cambodia and Ayutthaya not found in other documents.
Keywords: Cambodia; Ayutthaya; 15th century; Angkor; Ming
June 2004, [pdf]
This working paper by historian Michael Vickery touches upon the Mon history of Lower Burma of the 13th-14th centuries. It is also worth readin, like all his works, for the methodology and examples of critical questions to ask of sources.
Abstract:
Cambodia’s 15th century is nearly a blank page: no inscriptions, insignificant architecture, largely fictional chronicles, and little information in the records of other countries. But we may assume that processes similar to what may be ascertained in other parts of Southeast Asia were at work: changes in state formation, shift of political centers, growth of maritime trade and concomitant decline of ruling groups based in agriculture.
To make sense of the ‘Ming Factor’ in Cambodia’s 15th century we must start with the 12th-century ‘Sung Factor’ when the Sung began to encourage direct Chinese participation in overseas trade, leading to changes in the Southeast Asian countries involved. In Cambodia this is reflected in the 12th-century Cambodian attempts to conquer the coast of Champa with its good ports at the same time as relations with China increased.
The Chinese envoy Chou Ta-kuan in 1296 reported a recent war between Angkor and Hsien/Sien on the Gulf coastal area of Thailand which may well have been rivalry over control of the coasts, prefiguring the Ayutthaya-Cambodia rivalry of later centuries. Cambodia’s growing importance in this area is seen in the sudden increase of Chinese records of trade and diplomatic contact between the 1370s and mid-15th century, at the same time as similar developments with Hsien/Ayutthaya.
This implicit rivalry in trade with China may have been an element in the war of mid-15th century during which Ayutthaya occupied Angkor for more than a decade until expelled by Cambodians who moved their political center to the Phnom Penh region, an excellent river port area.
Because of the lack of other documentation for Cambodia, the Chinese records of contact are very important. The titles and royal names in the Ming shi-lu in particular reflect changes in Cambodian royal traditions under the influence of Ayutthaya, at the same time as Ayutthayan royal traditions were changing through relations with the north central Thai polities of Sukhothai, Phitsanulok and Kamphaeng Phetch, and with Chiang Mai in the far North.
In this paper I compare the genuine contemporary titles of these polities from the 12th century to the fifteenth as seen in inscriptions, when they exist, and the titles recorded in Chinese records from the 13th century through the 15th, in particular the abundance of such records in MSL. This demonstrates changes in relative status among these polities, as they developed economies based on sea trade.
The paper ends with study of the single chronicle which seems to provide accurate detail of political events in Cambodia in mid-15th century, and of special relations between Cambodia and Ayutthaya not found in other documents.
Keywords: Cambodia; Ayutthaya; 15th century; Angkor; Ming
Michael Vickery's Champa Revised (2003)
Vickery, Michael (2003) "Champa Revised," Working Paper 37, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (2003), March 2005, [pdf]
No matter what region or time period one specializes in, it's worth reading this paper for methodological insights. The paper questions the commonly accepted notion that there was a unified Champa state, proposing instead that the classical history of Champa over-extrapolates.
Abstract:
The name Champa refers to the region along the central and southern Vietnamese coast in which the major population group, identifiable from the 5th century onward by their own architectural and epigraphic remains, was the linguistically Austronesian Cham. The Cham settled mainly in river port deltas, and developed a Hindu and Buddhist religious culture exemplified by impressive brick temples. At its greatest extent, between the 9th and 15th centuries, Champa stretched from Quįŗ£ng BƬnh in the North to Phan Thiįŗæt and BiĆŖn HĆ²a in the South. As the title of this paper implies, I consider that the history of Champa, which, as a whole, has hardly been given critical study since Maspero's Le royaume de Champa of 1928, is in need of revision.
The important points which require revision are the following:
The origins of the Austronesian-speaking Cham who now live in Vietnam and Cambodia. There is now a consensus among specialists that the Cham arrived on the coast of the mainland from Nusantara, probably Borneo, in the last centuries B.C., although there is not yet agreement among archaeologists about the earliest settlement remains which may be attributable to them.
The Lin Yi problem. Was Lin Yi identical with Champa, from the beginning of records concerning it, or from a later date, or if not, what was it? I argue here that early Lin Yi, known from the 3rd century through Chinese histories, was not Champa.
Relations with Vietnam, in particular the notion that Champa, as well as Lin Yi, was always a victim of expansionism by its northern neighbor.
The narrative history of Champa as conceived by Maspero. Although Maspero's book received critical attention from soon after its publication, and more thoroughly later on by Rolf Stein, Maspero’s main conclusions passed literally into the famous synthesis by CoedĆØs, and have continued to exert strong influence on further work.
There are three types of sources for Champa history (1) Physical remains--brick structures considered to be temples, associated sculpture, and materials obtained from archaeological excavation; (2) Inscriptions in Old Cham and Sanskrit; (3) References in Chinese and Vietnamese histories about relations between those countries and the various polities south of the Chinese provinces in what is now northern Vietnam, and after the late 10th century south of territory claimed by Vietnam.
It is argued here that the classical treatment of Champa begun in Maspero's Le royaume du Champa, and continued in CoedĆØs' Les Ć©tats hindouisĆ©s has been wrong on most of the points listed above. One of their serious mistakes was to take Chinese reports on Champa, usually written long after the events, as the best sources, and to ignore the local inscriptions which contradicted them. In the present paper I have tied to confront Maspero and those who have followed him with the evidence of the Champa, and also the Cambodian, inscriptions to try to reach more accurate conclusions.
Of course, there are large gaps in which there are no inscriptions, and we are forced to rely on Chinese and Vietnamese histories, for example, the period of the Mongol invasions of Vietnam and Champa, the 30-year war at the end of the 14th century when Champa nearly conquered Vietnam, and, of course, the later history of Champa after the end of their inscriptions in the early 15th century. Even here new work is needed by scholars competent in the languages and familiar with advances in Southeast Asian historiography.
Keywords: Champa; Cham; Vietnam; Lin Yi; Southeast Asian History; Maspero
No matter what region or time period one specializes in, it's worth reading this paper for methodological insights. The paper questions the commonly accepted notion that there was a unified Champa state, proposing instead that the classical history of Champa over-extrapolates.
Abstract:
The name Champa refers to the region along the central and southern Vietnamese coast in which the major population group, identifiable from the 5th century onward by their own architectural and epigraphic remains, was the linguistically Austronesian Cham. The Cham settled mainly in river port deltas, and developed a Hindu and Buddhist religious culture exemplified by impressive brick temples. At its greatest extent, between the 9th and 15th centuries, Champa stretched from Quįŗ£ng BƬnh in the North to Phan Thiįŗæt and BiĆŖn HĆ²a in the South. As the title of this paper implies, I consider that the history of Champa, which, as a whole, has hardly been given critical study since Maspero's Le royaume de Champa of 1928, is in need of revision.
The important points which require revision are the following:
The origins of the Austronesian-speaking Cham who now live in Vietnam and Cambodia. There is now a consensus among specialists that the Cham arrived on the coast of the mainland from Nusantara, probably Borneo, in the last centuries B.C., although there is not yet agreement among archaeologists about the earliest settlement remains which may be attributable to them.
The Lin Yi problem. Was Lin Yi identical with Champa, from the beginning of records concerning it, or from a later date, or if not, what was it? I argue here that early Lin Yi, known from the 3rd century through Chinese histories, was not Champa.
Relations with Vietnam, in particular the notion that Champa, as well as Lin Yi, was always a victim of expansionism by its northern neighbor.
The narrative history of Champa as conceived by Maspero. Although Maspero's book received critical attention from soon after its publication, and more thoroughly later on by Rolf Stein, Maspero’s main conclusions passed literally into the famous synthesis by CoedĆØs, and have continued to exert strong influence on further work.
There are three types of sources for Champa history (1) Physical remains--brick structures considered to be temples, associated sculpture, and materials obtained from archaeological excavation; (2) Inscriptions in Old Cham and Sanskrit; (3) References in Chinese and Vietnamese histories about relations between those countries and the various polities south of the Chinese provinces in what is now northern Vietnam, and after the late 10th century south of territory claimed by Vietnam.
It is argued here that the classical treatment of Champa begun in Maspero's Le royaume du Champa, and continued in CoedĆØs' Les Ć©tats hindouisĆ©s has been wrong on most of the points listed above. One of their serious mistakes was to take Chinese reports on Champa, usually written long after the events, as the best sources, and to ignore the local inscriptions which contradicted them. In the present paper I have tied to confront Maspero and those who have followed him with the evidence of the Champa, and also the Cambodian, inscriptions to try to reach more accurate conclusions.
Of course, there are large gaps in which there are no inscriptions, and we are forced to rely on Chinese and Vietnamese histories, for example, the period of the Mongol invasions of Vietnam and Champa, the 30-year war at the end of the 14th century when Champa nearly conquered Vietnam, and, of course, the later history of Champa after the end of their inscriptions in the early 15th century. Even here new work is needed by scholars competent in the languages and familiar with advances in Southeast Asian historiography.
Keywords: Champa; Cham; Vietnam; Lin Yi; Southeast Asian History; Maspero
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Kleptocracy and Mancur Olson's books
Looking for the etymology of 'kleptocracy', excessive rent-seeking by those with political power, one source said that it originated in Spain 1819, during the Napoleonic invasions?
Anyway, the growth of the idea of kleptocracy seems to be attributable to the economist Mancur Olson, especially in his last book Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships:
Olson also addreses democracy, which I filed away for my work interest in FDI in emerging economies, but I write papers on early modern political history and warfare, so I found this discussion particularly interesting.
Found a reflective essay on the meaning of the term as well as the interesting, but rather pessimistic "Iron Law of Oligarchy", which "states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic or autocratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop into oligarchies."
Anyway, the growth of the idea of kleptocracy seems to be attributable to the economist Mancur Olson, especially in his last book Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships:
"A central strand is the nature of political power, and how different kinds of power promote different kinds of economic behaviour...Through history, Olson observes, it has been better to live under political tyranny than to be subject to the depredations of roving bands of warrior-thieves...Assuming that tyrants and thieves are alike, in that they are out for whatever they can extract from their subjects, why should one kind of predation be better than the other? The answer, Olson explains, is that the tyrant has a stake, an "encompassing interest", in the domain he is exploiting: if it prospers, he can extract more for himself in taxes and other ways. A roving bandit merely destroys and moves on. A stationary bandit keeps taxes low in the short term in order to spur growth and gather more revenue later; in fact he goes further, and provides growth-promoting public goods, the better to improve his take...Autocracy, then, is usually much better for the victims than anarchy."Peaceful, settled rule by political elites, even they extract excessive economic rents, is better than a continual, endemic state of warfare and feuding.
Olson also addreses democracy, which I filed away for my work interest in FDI in emerging economies, but I write papers on early modern political history and warfare, so I found this discussion particularly interesting.
Found a reflective essay on the meaning of the term as well as the interesting, but rather pessimistic "Iron Law of Oligarchy", which "states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic or autocratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop into oligarchies."
Examples from Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" chapter on "Kleptocracy" is a good intro to history of non-western political economy and the Maori invasion of Chatham Island is a memorable example of the collision of whole socio-political systems. This book was useful teaching 100 sophomore non-native English speakers in a Thai university economic history since there is a translation in Thai that can be read in parallel.
This newly coined word "Kleptocracy" seems to have been the inspiration behind Acemoglu paper: Kleptocracy and Divide-and-Rule: A Model of Personal Rule (The Alfred Marshall Lecture) Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson and Thierry Verdier April 2004, Journal of the European Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, v.2, 162-192
Brad DeLong's blog today showed how a fantastically inclusive course that includes everything an informed undergraduate should understand can be transformed by the brutish bigotry of conservative journalism. Self-reinforcing idiocy at the Weekly Standard cited the names of courses without the content of the courses to make them sound ridiculous. To anyone with some knowledge who probes a little, the conservative journalists are the ones who end up sounding completely ridiculous. William Kristol, editor and founder of the Weekly Standard, teaches a course on intellectual history at Harvard and he allows this sort of ridiculous article as editor? What a charade! Someone should call him to task on it.
This newly coined word "Kleptocracy" seems to have been the inspiration behind Acemoglu paper: Kleptocracy and Divide-and-Rule: A Model of Personal Rule (The Alfred Marshall Lecture) Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson and Thierry Verdier April 2004, Journal of the European Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, v.2, 162-192
Brad DeLong's blog today showed how a fantastically inclusive course that includes everything an informed undergraduate should understand can be transformed by the brutish bigotry of conservative journalism. Self-reinforcing idiocy at the Weekly Standard cited the names of courses without the content of the courses to make them sound ridiculous. To anyone with some knowledge who probes a little, the conservative journalists are the ones who end up sounding completely ridiculous. William Kristol, editor and founder of the Weekly Standard, teaches a course on intellectual history at Harvard and he allows this sort of ridiculous article as editor? What a charade! Someone should call him to task on it.
Literary intellectuals and hypocrisy
From Brad DeLong's blog, nobel prize winning writer Gunter Grass is an ex-nazi and hypocrite.
Hypocrisy and self-contradiction, just another trope on the literary intellectual's palette?
Actually, distortion of historical truth, or at least the mangling of historical truth, is just another higher order truth to be untangled from the historical record. Deconstructionists will, in turn, be deconstructed. A thread of intellectual history yet to be written.
To be fair, the Gunter Grass problem is a problem with history in every culture. In post-WWII Malaysia and Singapore "the problem of 'collaboration' stood in the way of a full reckoning, and the needs of nationhood often demanded amnesia." (Forgotten Armies: Britain's Asian Empire and the War with Japan, 2004, p. 329) See 'War and Memory in Singapore and Malaysia' (2000).
More support for Rankean "what actually happened" in historiography.
Hypocrisy and self-contradiction, just another trope on the literary intellectual's palette?
Actually, distortion of historical truth, or at least the mangling of historical truth, is just another higher order truth to be untangled from the historical record. Deconstructionists will, in turn, be deconstructed. A thread of intellectual history yet to be written.
To be fair, the Gunter Grass problem is a problem with history in every culture. In post-WWII Malaysia and Singapore "the problem of 'collaboration' stood in the way of a full reckoning, and the needs of nationhood often demanded amnesia." (Forgotten Armies: Britain's Asian Empire and the War with Japan, 2004, p. 329) See 'War and Memory in Singapore and Malaysia' (2000).
More support for Rankean "what actually happened" in historiography.
Moment of self-reflective terminological angst
I can already see a problem with the dichotomisation western vs. non-western applied to warfare, politics, or economics. This distinction has a tendency to attribute suboptimal or bad features to the non-western world and optimal 'good' features like democracy, modern technology, and rationalised and fair social institutions to the western world. But that's not what I had in mind.
What I had in mind was drawing attention to a deficit in research and knowledge on the non-western world and the qualitative differences with the west, particularly in the pre-modern era. Whereas the classical Greek and Roman periods have been intensively studied in the west, serious attention to these periods reached a nadir in the colonial period, but this scholarship is embedded in a now discredited colonial approach to the subject matter. New work needs to be done.
In fact, I would eschew much standard terminology such as "democracy" for the idea of "participation" (participation, legality/constitutionality, transparency) because as most people point out places like South Korea or Thailand have democracy, but a home-grown democracy that differs in substantial ways from western democracy practiced in Europe, the US, and Australia. Many point out that longstanding traditional village governance, headmanship, has a high degree of participation (with varying degress of coercive consensus making that violate our notions of democracy).
What I had in mind was drawing attention to a deficit in research and knowledge on the non-western world and the qualitative differences with the west, particularly in the pre-modern era. Whereas the classical Greek and Roman periods have been intensively studied in the west, serious attention to these periods reached a nadir in the colonial period, but this scholarship is embedded in a now discredited colonial approach to the subject matter. New work needs to be done.
In fact, I would eschew much standard terminology such as "democracy" for the idea of "participation" (participation, legality/constitutionality, transparency) because as most people point out places like South Korea or Thailand have democracy, but a home-grown democracy that differs in substantial ways from western democracy practiced in Europe, the US, and Australia. Many point out that longstanding traditional village governance, headmanship, has a high degree of participation (with varying degress of coercive consensus making that violate our notions of democracy).
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Economist Avner Greif's theory of endogenous institutional change
Read "A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change" by Greif and Laitin last night.
This paper just rang with application to historical data as I read it. The self-enforcing nature of institutions, positive and negative feedback, feedback diagrams, and even human agency has a place in this model. Is it useful The question is whether the model is useful when applied without mathematics to make sense of history, of elite contention for resources. Only one example is presented in any detail. This is a dense paper that requires many readings to make sense of, but the pay-off in deeper understanding of superficial historical data promises to be great.
Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade
Institutions and Impersonal Exchange: The European Experience
Avner Greif's personal homepage has additional texts:
Avner Greif and David D. Laitin -- A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change
1. Introduction to book on institutional economics of medieval trade
2. "Commitment, Coercion and Markets: The Nature and Dynamics of Institutions Supporting Exchange" from the "Handbook of New Institutional Economics"
This paper just rang with application to historical data as I read it. The self-enforcing nature of institutions, positive and negative feedback, feedback diagrams, and even human agency has a place in this model. Is it useful The question is whether the model is useful when applied without mathematics to make sense of history, of elite contention for resources. Only one example is presented in any detail. This is a dense paper that requires many readings to make sense of, but the pay-off in deeper understanding of superficial historical data promises to be great.
Other recent Stanford working papers by Greif:
Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade
Institutions and Impersonal Exchange: The European Experience
Avner Greif's personal homepage has additional texts:
Avner Greif and David D. Laitin -- A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change
1. Introduction to book on institutional economics of medieval trade
2. "Commitment, Coercion and Markets: The Nature and Dynamics of Institutions Supporting Exchange" from the "Handbook of New Institutional Economics"
Friday, September 15, 2006
Small divergences, then larger ones, then the "great divergence"
If in history the body of the dog is the facts and the tail is the generalization we reach from them, then should the tail be wagging the dog as it often does when historians jump straight into and devote inordinate amounts of time to artificially constructed "great debates".
I would argue that in a history course, and more specifically in an economic history course, large unresolved questions or issues around which debates still swirl should be avoided in favor of detailed case studies from which limited, humble yet powerful generalisations can be made. In other words, teach students the limits of analysis. How to formulate and test small hypotheses and how to, step by step, move from these to larger more inclusive hypotheses.
What I am thinking about here, is life outside of academia. Contrast, for instance, Wolfowitz's promise of quick success in the Iraq War, avoiding Colin Powell with his more experienced Edmund Burke-like "break it you buy it" pottery barn rule, and war correspondent, historian, and British conservative Sir Max Hasting's take on the Iraq war:
Perdue's paper warns us not to enter historical texts with preconceived conclusions. The late nineteenth century sugar industry is used as an example:
I would argue that in a history course, and more specifically in an economic history course, large unresolved questions or issues around which debates still swirl should be avoided in favor of detailed case studies from which limited, humble yet powerful generalisations can be made. In other words, teach students the limits of analysis. How to formulate and test small hypotheses and how to, step by step, move from these to larger more inclusive hypotheses.
What I am thinking about here, is life outside of academia. Contrast, for instance, Wolfowitz's promise of quick success in the Iraq War, avoiding Colin Powell with his more experienced Edmund Burke-like "break it you buy it" pottery barn rule, and war correspondent, historian, and British conservative Sir Max Hasting's take on the Iraq war:
The madness of Bush's policy is that he has made a wilful choice to amalgamate the grossly irrational, totalitarian and homicidal objectives of al-Qaida with the just claims of Palestinians and grievances of Iraqis. His remarks on Saturday invite Muslims who sympathise with Hamas or reject Iraq's occupation or merely aspire to grow opium in Afghanistan to make common cause with Bin Laden.What I would not teach is the "great divergence" even though it seems to be mandatory now, namely why did the west have the "industrial revolution" while the non-western world was left to play a game of economic catch up? Comments in a Perdue paper provide a little support for this view.
If the United States insists upon regarding all Muslim opponents of its foreign policies as a homogeneous enemy then that is what they become. The Muslim radicals' "single narrative" portrays the entire course of history as a Christian and Jewish plot against Islam.
It is widely agreed among western governments and intelligence agencies that, in order to defeat the pernicious spread of such nonsense, a convincing counter-narrative is needed. Yet it becomes a trifle difficult to compose this when the US president promulgates his own single narrative, almost as ridiculous as that of al-Qaida. (Source: Brad DeLong's Blog)
"Writing and teaching world history is not easy. Unavoidably, we must simplify the story by knitting together a few strands of the voluminous historical record. Anyone who tries to draw such a grand picture deserves respect. There is nothing wrong per se with thinking big. But large-scale explanatory schemes are fraught with dangers. Too often the big thinkers merely repeat old stereotypes held by eighteenth and nineteenth century Europeans about classical Asian civilizations. Tired cliches are dressed up as new theories, ignoring recent research."How could a short survey course provide more than a 'fast food explanation' without almost exlcusively focusing on the problem to the exclusion of everything else, like the western media often does in so-called Media Circuses when it latches on to one story to the exclusion of all else. This mentality does seem to affect academia sometimes. For instance, the Anthropology of War course at MIT, instead of poking around and searching under less visited rocks to expand our corpus of historical knowledge (e.g. the Maori Musket Wars, technological transfer fuelling expansionary warfare), the course chooses to focus exclusively on the Iraq War, as if the rest of the world will not be equally as relevant one day in the future.
"A central question for European historians is the origin of the Industrial Revolution. For China, the inverse question is often raised: why did imperial China 'stagnate', or fail to break through to sustained industrial growth by 1800, when it had led the world in economic dynamism and technological innovation at least up to 1200 CE? Both of these questions have generated a great deal
of discussion. We are plagued, however, by 'fast-food' explanations which attempt to take a shortcut through complex empirical and theoretical issues." (Source: China in the Early Modern World: Shortcuts, Myths and Realities Education About Asia, Summer, 1999. Peter C. Perdue)
Perdue's paper warns us not to enter historical texts with preconceived conclusions. The late nineteenth century sugar industry is used as an example:
"Thus the technological changes in the sugar industry had little or nothing to do with the relative price of labor, but a lot to do with the action of the two states. The colonial Japanese state could enforce social changes that supported a total system of industrial production, from the field to the factory to the ports, but the weakened Qing empire, despite its efforts at self-strengthening, had the will but not the strength to direct change."Severely dichotomized debates like the "great divergence debate" if they soak too much in the way of pedagogical and research resources can be counterproductive.
Non-western economic history I
Great thread at Brad DeLong's blog on non-western economic history. Threads like this really provide the motivation to write good economic history of Burma-Yunnan-bay of Bengal (c. 1350-1600). Couldn't resist making an obnoxiously long (but not obnoxious, I hope) comment:
>>Colin Danby: "Can anyone suggest long-scale economic histories of mainland and/or island Southeast Asia?"
Victor Lieberman (2003) Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830, Cambridge University Press covers 1000 years and references all relevant literature. Lieberman also employs the three way model of Smithian, Schumpeterian, and Solovian growth of Joel Mokyr, The Levers of Riches. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
>>Ari Levine; "Timothy Brook's _Confusions of Pleasure_ is more a cultural history of commercialization."
Which makes it very relevant to the Thorstein Veblen conspicuous consumption threads on professor DeLong's blog recently. Much of these luxury goods came from the Tai ethnic regions on the border of Southeast Asia in Yunnan, covered in:
Sun, Laichen. (2000) Ming-Southeast Asian overland interactions, c. 1368-1644. PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan.
Also, the management of China's northern enemies over thousands of years has an economic dimension to it. Arthur Waldron's "The Great Wall of China from History to Myth" covers "trade or raid" and Di Cosmo's online paper below covers the public finance transition from raiding to tribute to settled taxation which leads to the issues of land settlement and peasant mobility, good focal points for cross-cultural comparison: Di Cosmo, Nicola.(1999) “State Formation and Periodization in
Inner Asian History,” Journal of World History, 10:1 (Spring, 1999): 1-40.
Personally, analyzing the dynamics of pre-modern non-western economies on their own terms like Lieberman's book above is going to do more to enlighten students about how non-western economic (and political) systems are radically different and how naive solutions (like transform Iraq into American democracy in 90 days or less) are bound to fail. Better, that is, than broad questions like the Pomeranz what caused the "great divergence" question. Anthony Reid eventually backed off trying to apply a similar broad European-derived thesis (the "17th century crisis") from insular to mainland Southeast Asian history when Lieberman challenged him, see p. 9:
http://www.city.fukuoka.jp/asiaprize/english/lecture/pdf/13_reid.pdf
IMHO the beauty of historical work lies in the details, although it would be nice to see economic theory like Avner Greif's information economics explain more history.
>>Colin Danby: "It would be great if someone could post recommended readings on East Africa's role in the Indian Ocean economy."
Malyn Newitt (1995) A History of Mozambique, Indiana University Press
Covers Portuguese settlement and trade plus climate constraints on ocean travel and trade.
>>Colin Danby: "Can anyone suggest long-scale economic histories of mainland and/or island Southeast Asia?"
Victor Lieberman (2003) Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830, Cambridge University Press covers 1000 years and references all relevant literature. Lieberman also employs the three way model of Smithian, Schumpeterian, and Solovian growth of Joel Mokyr, The Levers of Riches. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
>>Ari Levine; "Timothy Brook's _Confusions of Pleasure_ is more a cultural history of commercialization."
Which makes it very relevant to the Thorstein Veblen conspicuous consumption threads on professor DeLong's blog recently. Much of these luxury goods came from the Tai ethnic regions on the border of Southeast Asia in Yunnan, covered in:
Sun, Laichen. (2000) Ming-Southeast Asian overland interactions, c. 1368-1644. PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan.
Also, the management of China's northern enemies over thousands of years has an economic dimension to it. Arthur Waldron's "The Great Wall of China from History to Myth" covers "trade or raid" and Di Cosmo's online paper below covers the public finance transition from raiding to tribute to settled taxation which leads to the issues of land settlement and peasant mobility, good focal points for cross-cultural comparison: Di Cosmo, Nicola.(1999) “State Formation and Periodization in
Inner Asian History,” Journal of World History, 10:1 (Spring, 1999): 1-40.
Personally, analyzing the dynamics of pre-modern non-western economies on their own terms like Lieberman's book above is going to do more to enlighten students about how non-western economic (and political) systems are radically different and how naive solutions (like transform Iraq into American democracy in 90 days or less) are bound to fail. Better, that is, than broad questions like the Pomeranz what caused the "great divergence" question. Anthony Reid eventually backed off trying to apply a similar broad European-derived thesis (the "17th century crisis") from insular to mainland Southeast Asian history when Lieberman challenged him, see p. 9:
http://www.city.fukuoka.jp/asiaprize/english/lecture/pdf/13_reid.pdf
IMHO the beauty of historical work lies in the details, although it would be nice to see economic theory like Avner Greif's information economics explain more history.
>>Colin Danby: "It would be great if someone could post recommended readings on East Africa's role in the Indian Ocean economy."
Malyn Newitt (1995) A History of Mozambique, Indiana University Press
Covers Portuguese settlement and trade plus climate constraints on ocean travel and trade.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Pre-World War II immigration in the British empire
The pre-World War II Indian immigration into Burma has always perplexed me.
One the one hand I have met so many Indians who were affected by the post-war backlash against them in Burma. For example, rice mills and property seized and are not recognized as full Burmese citizens. There is a standard condemning story about chettiar money lenders that Michael Adas's book counteracts to a certain extent:
Adas, Michael. The Burma Delta: Economic Development and Social Change on an Asian Rice. Frontier, 1852-1941. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 1974. .
Wouldn't an economist argue that the Burmese as a whole benefited from flows of Indian labor and capital into Burma before the war? Reading this recent book really threw this belief into question:
Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia 1941-1945 (2004) by Christopher Bayly,Tim Harper.
This book looks like only a military history, but it is actually a panoramic social history of the pre-World War II British Empire in Southeast Asia too. It certainly sheds a different, more sinister light on the British empire than, for instance, Niall Ferguson's book.
This book is a near perfect history book. It is well written in an engaging style that has made it very popular. The book is built upon original primary archival sources such as memoirs which make it original, not just another rehash of secondary sources. It combines multiple perspectives from the high level governor or viceroy to the coolies at the waterfront. It gives you a better idea of the impact of war on society as a whole than any other book that I've read.
This book is also a sobering story of free flowing immigration in the British Empire on the eve of of World War II. It shows some of the chaos that this freedom for all to immigrate led to. Massive Indian immigration into Burma overwhelmed the local population, displacing them with cheap labor. In the agricultural sector money lenders foreclosed and seized land, the Japanese invaded, the Indians fled, and a dependence on Burmese rice to the tune of 15% in Bengal contributed to a famine, 3 million people died, who had specialized in jute production before the war. Can one fully predict exogenous shocks? The pre-empire social formations were probably more resilient to them.
The British empire seems to be a test case in many respects for all the arguments of market liberalisation that the discipline of economics presents, such as freedom of immigration.
One the one hand I have met so many Indians who were affected by the post-war backlash against them in Burma. For example, rice mills and property seized and are not recognized as full Burmese citizens. There is a standard condemning story about chettiar money lenders that Michael Adas's book counteracts to a certain extent:
Adas, Michael. The Burma Delta: Economic Development and Social Change on an Asian Rice. Frontier, 1852-1941. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 1974. .
Wouldn't an economist argue that the Burmese as a whole benefited from flows of Indian labor and capital into Burma before the war? Reading this recent book really threw this belief into question:
Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia 1941-1945 (2004) by Christopher Bayly,Tim Harper.
This book looks like only a military history, but it is actually a panoramic social history of the pre-World War II British Empire in Southeast Asia too. It certainly sheds a different, more sinister light on the British empire than, for instance, Niall Ferguson's book.
This book is a near perfect history book. It is well written in an engaging style that has made it very popular. The book is built upon original primary archival sources such as memoirs which make it original, not just another rehash of secondary sources. It combines multiple perspectives from the high level governor or viceroy to the coolies at the waterfront. It gives you a better idea of the impact of war on society as a whole than any other book that I've read.
This book is also a sobering story of free flowing immigration in the British Empire on the eve of of World War II. It shows some of the chaos that this freedom for all to immigrate led to. Massive Indian immigration into Burma overwhelmed the local population, displacing them with cheap labor. In the agricultural sector money lenders foreclosed and seized land, the Japanese invaded, the Indians fled, and a dependence on Burmese rice to the tune of 15% in Bengal contributed to a famine, 3 million people died, who had specialized in jute production before the war. Can one fully predict exogenous shocks? The pre-empire social formations were probably more resilient to them.
The British empire seems to be a test case in many respects for all the arguments of market liberalisation that the discipline of economics presents, such as freedom of immigration.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Open Source GIS: OSGEO.ORG
Learned about new open source GIS software for map making from an IT writer at my newspaper today. Quite exciting for me since geography is essential to get a handle on the history of Burma-Yunnan-Bay of Bengal (c. 1350-1600).
1. OSGEO.ORG is offering the open source GIS software.
2. Here is the GIS blog Between the Poles of Geoff Zeiss who works for Autodesk working on the project somehow.
3. Also found this open source GIS resource list.
Anyway, one these days, soon, supporting written history with maps will be a lot easier.
1. OSGEO.ORG is offering the open source GIS software.
2. Here is the GIS blog Between the Poles of Geoff Zeiss who works for Autodesk working on the project somehow.
3. Also found this open source GIS resource list.
Anyway, one these days, soon, supporting written history with maps will be a lot easier.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Models for academic history journals (+ supporting materials)
This journal of Tibetan history, religion, and culture is a model for journals devoted to Burmese history or that of ethnic minorities in Southeast Asia like the Tai or Mon.
The format of the articles with abstract and footnotes is nice and uniform and could be easily emulated with Wikipedia fitted with appropriate templates. The site also has nice reference materials such as a primary source document collection, maps, and gazeteer.
The format of the articles with abstract and footnotes is nice and uniform and could be easily emulated with Wikipedia fitted with appropriate templates. The site also has nice reference materials such as a primary source document collection, maps, and gazeteer.
OpenCourseWare Consortium
Free Access to Open Materials for Teaching, Learning and Research, Supported by The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation.
List of open access academic journal resources.
List of open access academic journal resources.
Friday, September 01, 2006
Mong Mao: Mandala, Galactic Polity, or Solar Polity?
One of three metaphors for political organisation, mandala, galactic polity, or solar polity, might lead to making sense of Mong Mao's history.
It always seemed to me that the use of the concept "mandala" in pre-colonial Southeast Asian history seemed to reduce the complexity of history, the interplay of strategic human agency and more fixed, long-term, deterministic structures, that one finds in well-written narrative histories, to a simple concept, a much too simple concept.
I've grown to appreciate the concept recently, and understand how some historians such as Sunait Chutintaranond, Thongchai Winichakul, and Martin Stuart-Fox have used the idea to pick apart received traditions about unified and centralized rule in their respective time periods and regions.
Sometimes the best way to gain an appreciation of an idea is to go through the laborious process of solving the problem that the idea was created as a solution to. After rereading Martin Stuart-Fox's history of Laos (see bibliography below) that uses the concept of Mandala extensively, I realized that the concept probably applies to nearby Mong Mao also. Furthermore, I read Chris Baker's paper that argues that the northern provinces of Ayutthaya were largely independent of the Ayutthayan center even into the period of Burmese invasions of the 16th century, but when I read Sunait Chutintaranond's paper, I realized that Sunait had already shown how "mandala" was the solution to this problem.
The world historian and historian of Burma Victor Lieberman's rejection of the term mandala in lieu of "solar polity" , "galactic polity" being yet another possible metaphor, is particularly instructive.
I still think that narrative history that closely follows primary sources is the best way to capture the interplay between strategic human action and long-term social and environmental factors in human and plan to follow this course in future research. General models that have been highlighted by Lieberman's Strange Parallels recently, including Gerschenkron's collective problems and advantages to backwardness, O'Connor's agricultural succession in Southeast Asia, and a general political anthropology approach, can clarify and highlight important themes in this narrative (without imputing abolute causal relations of different factors where multicausal factors is the norm).
Anyway, I've been slowly revising the Wikipedia page devoted to "Mandala (Southeast Asian history)". Here are my contributions to-date:
Mandala (Southeast Asian history)
Mandala means "circle of kings". The mandala is a model for describing the patterns of diffuse political power in early Southeast Asian history. The concept of a mandala counteracts our natural tendency to look for the unified political power of later history, the power of large kingdoms and nation states, in earlier history where local power is more important. In the words of O.W. Wolters who originated the idea in 1982:
Intersecting mandalas circa 1360: from north to south Lan Xang, Lanna, Sukhothai, Ayutthaya and Angkor.
Other metaphors such as Tambiah's original idea of a "galactic polity" [2], describe similar political patterns as the mandala. The metaphor of a "solar polity" is preferred by the historian of Southeast Asia Victor Lieberman because in the solar system there is one central body, the sun, and the components or planets of the solar system can be fully enumerated, unlike galaxies. [3]
The Thai historian Sunait Chutintaranond made an important contribution to study of the mandala in Southeast Asian history by demonstrating that "three assumptions responsible for the view that Ayudhya was a strong centralized state" did not hold and that "in Ayudhya the hegemony of provincial governors was never successfully eliminated" [6]....
Lieberman, Victor Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830, Volume 1: Integration on the Mainland, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Stuart-Fox, Martin, The Lao Kingdom of Lan Xang: Rise and Decline, White Lotus, 1998.
Tambiah, World Conqueror and World Renouncer, Cambridge, 1976.
Thongchai Winichakul. Siam Mapped. University of Hawaii Press, 1984. ISBN 0-8248-1974-8
Wolters, O.W. History, Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1982. ISBN 0-87727-725-7
Wolters, O.W. History, Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Revised Edition, 1999.
Notes
1. O.W. Wolters, 1999, p. 27
2. Tambiah, 1976, ch. 7, cited in Lieberman, 2003, p. 33
3. Lieberman, 2003, p. 33
4. O.W. Wolters, 1999, pp. 27-40, 126-154
5. Martin-Fox, 1998, pp. 14-15
6. O.W. Wolters, pp. 142-143 citing Chutintaranond, 1990, pp. 97-98
It always seemed to me that the use of the concept "mandala" in pre-colonial Southeast Asian history seemed to reduce the complexity of history, the interplay of strategic human agency and more fixed, long-term, deterministic structures, that one finds in well-written narrative histories, to a simple concept, a much too simple concept.
I've grown to appreciate the concept recently, and understand how some historians such as Sunait Chutintaranond, Thongchai Winichakul, and Martin Stuart-Fox have used the idea to pick apart received traditions about unified and centralized rule in their respective time periods and regions.
Sometimes the best way to gain an appreciation of an idea is to go through the laborious process of solving the problem that the idea was created as a solution to. After rereading Martin Stuart-Fox's history of Laos (see bibliography below) that uses the concept of Mandala extensively, I realized that the concept probably applies to nearby Mong Mao also. Furthermore, I read Chris Baker's paper that argues that the northern provinces of Ayutthaya were largely independent of the Ayutthayan center even into the period of Burmese invasions of the 16th century, but when I read Sunait Chutintaranond's paper, I realized that Sunait had already shown how "mandala" was the solution to this problem.
The world historian and historian of Burma Victor Lieberman's rejection of the term mandala in lieu of "solar polity" , "galactic polity" being yet another possible metaphor, is particularly instructive.
I still think that narrative history that closely follows primary sources is the best way to capture the interplay between strategic human action and long-term social and environmental factors in human and plan to follow this course in future research. General models that have been highlighted by Lieberman's Strange Parallels recently, including Gerschenkron's collective problems and advantages to backwardness, O'Connor's agricultural succession in Southeast Asia, and a general political anthropology approach, can clarify and highlight important themes in this narrative (without imputing abolute causal relations of different factors where multicausal factors is the norm).
Anyway, I've been slowly revising the Wikipedia page devoted to "Mandala (Southeast Asian history)". Here are my contributions to-date:
Mandala (Southeast Asian history)
Mandala means "circle of kings". The mandala is a model for describing the patterns of diffuse political power in early Southeast Asian history. The concept of a mandala counteracts our natural tendency to look for the unified political power of later history, the power of large kingdoms and nation states, in earlier history where local power is more important. In the words of O.W. Wolters who originated the idea in 1982:
"The map of earlier Southeast Asia which evolved from the prehistoric networks of small settlements and reveals itself in historical records was a patchwork of often overlapping mandalas"[1]In some ways similar to the feudal system of Europe, states were linked in overlord-tributary relationships. Compared to feudalism however, the system gave greater independence to the subordinate states; it emphasised personal rather than official or territorial relationships; and it was often non-exclusive. Any particular area, therefore, could be subject to several powers or none.
Intersecting mandalas circa 1360: from north to south Lan Xang, Lanna, Sukhothai, Ayutthaya and Angkor.
Terminology
The term draws a comparison with the mandala of the Hindu and Buddhist worldview; the comparison emphasises the radiation of power from each power centre, as well as the non-physical basis of the system.Other metaphors such as Tambiah's original idea of a "galactic polity" [2], describe similar political patterns as the mandala. The metaphor of a "solar polity" is preferred by the historian of Southeast Asia Victor Lieberman because in the solar system there is one central body, the sun, and the components or planets of the solar system can be fully enumerated, unlike galaxies. [3]
History
....The historian Stuart-Fox uses the term "mandala" extensively to describe the history of the Lao kingdom of Lan Xang as a structure of loosely held together "meuang" that disintegrated after Lan Xang's conquest by Siam starting in the 18th century [5]The Thai historian Sunait Chutintaranond made an important contribution to study of the mandala in Southeast Asian history by demonstrating that "three assumptions responsible for the view that Ayudhya was a strong centralized state" did not hold and that "in Ayudhya the hegemony of provincial governors was never successfully eliminated" [6]....
References
Chutintaranond, Sunait, "Mandala, segmentary state, and Politics of Centralization in Medieval Ayudhya," Journal of the Siam Society 78, 1, 1990, p. 1.Lieberman, Victor Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830, Volume 1: Integration on the Mainland, Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Stuart-Fox, Martin, The Lao Kingdom of Lan Xang: Rise and Decline, White Lotus, 1998.
Tambiah, World Conqueror and World Renouncer, Cambridge, 1976.
Thongchai Winichakul. Siam Mapped. University of Hawaii Press, 1984. ISBN 0-8248-1974-8
Wolters, O.W. History, Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1982. ISBN 0-87727-725-7
Wolters, O.W. History, Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Revised Edition, 1999.
Notes
1. O.W. Wolters, 1999, p. 27
2. Tambiah, 1976, ch. 7, cited in Lieberman, 2003, p. 33
3. Lieberman, 2003, p. 33
4. O.W. Wolters, 1999, pp. 27-40, 126-154
5. Martin-Fox, 1998, pp. 14-15
6. O.W. Wolters, pp. 142-143 citing Chutintaranond, 1990, pp. 97-98
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Google to the rescue!
(Google island/library of orphaned books)
Google is creating a library of books with expired copyrights!
Google has realised that books with expired copyrights are a goldmine of information.
Allow me to be Nostradamus for a moment and predict that this move might shift the global techntonic publishing plates and convince the paper obsessed that it's time to change and focus on computer readable books (which you can publish in smaller increments and revise without acknowledging the embarassing fact that you wasted paper the first time round). Once computer readable books overtake paper, the next step is express printing of very limited paper editions, because we still can't lug an expensive computer whereever we go, for instance, to a picnic in the park, without our wives rightly being angry at us for spoiling the picnic. (But we can bring a handheld)
The first thing that came to mind, rather strangely, was the island of misfit toys in the Christmas Special Rudolf the Rednosed Reindeer. Perhaps my brain needs rewiring! Actually, the brain apparently remembers more about this childhood classic then the conscious mind does:
Read The Guardian
Read ZDNet
The Guardian really captures the relevance of this revolutionary move. As a denizen (actually "intense user" is more appropriate since I don't sleep in the library) of U.C. Berkeley's library when I am in the United States, I realize you have to actually stroll through the stacks to understand the vast store of untapped knowledge waiting there to be liberated:
Google has realised that books with expired copyrights are a goldmine of information.
Allow me to be Nostradamus for a moment and predict that this move might shift the global techntonic publishing plates and convince the paper obsessed that it's time to change and focus on computer readable books (which you can publish in smaller increments and revise without acknowledging the embarassing fact that you wasted paper the first time round). Once computer readable books overtake paper, the next step is express printing of very limited paper editions, because we still can't lug an expensive computer whereever we go, for instance, to a picnic in the park, without our wives rightly being angry at us for spoiling the picnic. (But we can bring a handheld)
The first thing that came to mind, rather strangely, was the island of misfit toys in the Christmas Special Rudolf the Rednosed Reindeer. Perhaps my brain needs rewiring! Actually, the brain apparently remembers more about this childhood classic then the conscious mind does:
"When there is a strong fog, Santa relies on Rudolph as a beacon, and Rudolph gets them to the Island of Misfit Toys and at the end, the toys are given homes (they are dropped out of the sleigh behind the credits via umbrellas)."
Read The Guardian
Read ZDNet
The Guardian really captures the relevance of this revolutionary move. As a denizen (actually "intense user" is more appropriate since I don't sleep in the library) of U.C. Berkeley's library when I am in the United States, I realize you have to actually stroll through the stacks to understand the vast store of untapped knowledge waiting there to be liberated:
Google says it aims to make the world's books "discoverable online" by offering both well known classics and obscure titles on every conceivable subject. The search engine's foray into the world of books has riled publishers around the world but the company's academic backers were keen to stress yesterday that it had been misunderstood.
Reg Carr, director of Oxford University's Bodleian Library, a partner in the project, said it would open up the world of literature and make available more obscure titles such as scientific tracts and long-forgotten poetry from the 18th century.
"Public domain books, long out of copyright and seen only by the fortunate few in the great research libraries of the world, are about to come out of the closet in their millions and into the homes of internet users all over the world."
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Acemoglu: Gerschenkron's successor
Bumped into the work of Daron Acemoglu who won the 2005 John Bates Clark Medal while I was searching for material on Gerschenkron Gerschenkron was the great 20th-century scholar of economic development and
Acemoglu is the Gerschenkron of present-day economics. Gerschenkron was once cited by Subrahmanyam as being relevant to the "backward" Tai hinterlands of western mainland Southeast Asia (aka Burma aka Myanmar). Acemoglu may be someone with relevance to premodern political economy of mainland Southeast Asia. Can't even access his Wikipedia page, so here is the mirror from Answers.com. In "Why not a Political Coase Theorem" he argues that in politics the Coase Theorem breaks down due to commitment problems. "A Theory of Political Transitions"
(Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson September 2001, American Economic Review, volume 91, pp 938-963) sounds like it might address political succession, mathematically I hope. The paper "Kleptocracy and Divide-and-Rule: A Model of Personal Rule" (Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson and Thierry Verdier April 2004, forthcoming, Journal of the European Economic Association) looks like it might be relevant, since divide and rule is so frequently cited as a method of governance in mainland Southeast Asia and Yunnan. A lot of his papers are online. Here is the blurb from his new book Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Dec 2005):
Clearly, relevant to Burma. There is also a good description on his John Bates Clark Medal page. Here are some interesting extracts from an online review:
[Link to whole article]
"...Mathematization conquered the core of economics in the years before, during and after World War II. Then, both because of the power of formal reasoning and the prestige they conferred, those who espoused formal methods tackled the applied fields, one after the other. The mathematizers were not welcomed like so many liberators; acceptance was often grudging."
"Moreover, as mathematical technique was brought to bear, a reduction in detail took place. New insights were more easily transferred from field to field; new tools could be deployed quickly. But the study of institutions, which before mathematization had loomed so large, gradually was eclipsed..."
"...Hence the image of an hourglass that had been suggested by his colleague Paul Romer, with the scope or breadth of topical economics (on the horizontal axis), plotted against time (on the vertical axis). As the language of economics is unified, a dramatic narrowing of topical concerns takes place -- followed in turn by a commensurate widening, as speakers of the language learn to tackle topics that they had been temporarily unable to address. Kreps ventured in 1997, "Ć[T]he field now seems to be returning to something like the breadth of the discipline before World War II..."
"...He [Gerschenkron] had one big idea, and he made the most of it: the advantages of backwardness in economic development."
"Thorstein Veblen had said as much in telegraphic form in 1915 in Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution: late-adopters could sometimes move out to the frontiers of development more easily than the pioneers of the industrial revolution. Gerschenkron now made various forms of slow economic development his specialty. He himself, with his late start, having had to learn to work in two new languages as an adult, exemplified the possibilities. "The more backward a country," he wrote, "the more complex and exciting its industrial history.""
"...Yale's William Parker said, "The resounding theses of Gerschenkron tell the size and shape and weave of the stockings the family hangs out on Christmas eve, but say nothing of when or why Santa Claus comes down the chimney")...
"...Daron Acemoglu's good fortune was to graduate from the University of York at the very moment that the hourglass of development economics was at its narrowest, when all the complications of economic growth had been briefly reduced to an argument about the causes of "technical change.""
"Like Gerschenkron, Acemoglu had been raised in a developing society -- in Istanbul, a Turk of Armenian descent. His father was a professor of law, later an attorney for banks and corporations. Political economy and development strategy came naturally to the dinner table."
"But his parents died when Acemoglu was in his teens. Political science at York disappointed him; he switched to economics instead. And when MIT admitted him to graduate school but failed to offer a scholarship, he did his doctorate at the London School of Economics instead, writing a dissertation on a variety of labor and macroeconomic topics. A year later, MIT hired him to teach -- an intriguing but unknown quantity at whom they wanted a closer look. Four years later they gave him tenure. He added dual citizenship as well."
"The committee that gave the 38-year-old Acemoglu the Clark medal last week described him as "extremely broad and productive," noting that in the course of a dozen years he had made significant contributions to the study of labor markets before moving on to "especially innovative" ideas about the role of institutions in development and political economy."
"In fact, it was a series of investigations in the history of the European colonization of much of the rest of the world, beginning in the 15th century, that made Acemoglu's reputation, demonstrating that institutions of various sorts were more important to development than economists previously had thought. The "rules of the game" -- the structure of property rights, the presence of markets, and their various frictions, the form that governments take -- are key determinants of what happens next, Acemoglu showed, in some unusually inventive and convincing ways."
"Take the rise of Europe in the first place. The importance of the Atlantic trade had long been noted, and various reasons for it advanced. With Simon Johnson of MIT's Sloan School and James Robinson of the University of California at Berkeley, Acemoglu argued in "The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change and Economic Growth" that England and the Netherlands leapt out front because a newly emergent merchant class benefited most from trade -- and was able to successfully demand institutions to protect their property and commerce. In contrast, although they had been the first to discover the richest lands, Spain and Portugal stagnated because their monarchies had managed to capture the early returns, they argued -- and thus were able to thwart their merchants' drive for power."
"In "Economic Backwardness in Political Perspective," Acemoglu and Robinson argued that political elites can be expected to pursue "blocking" strategies when innovation threatens their monopolies and when there is little threat to their power from politics. External threats reduced the temptation to block, they found -- producing a model that suggested why Britain, German and the United States had industrialized during the 19th century, while the landed aristocracies in Russia and Austria-Hungary sought to hold back the tide."
[Niall Ferguson in Colossus has a nice overview of this in his coverage of post-WWII Japanese and German development]
"In "Reversal of Fortune," Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson argued that colonial powers pursued very different strategies in different lands, with fateful consequences. In rich and densely populated countries such as Mexico and Peru, they extracted wealth; in poor and sparsely settled countries such as British North America and Argentina, they encouraged investment."
"And in "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development" they inventively teased evidence from differing mortality rates faced by Europeans in different countries of how the choices made in those circumstanced gave rise to different institutions and so to different development paths."
"The Clark committee noted that some of the methods and conclusions were still being debated -- but that a broad and substantial rethinking of the development process was underway no matter what. The appearance this summer of Acemoglu's book with Robinson, The Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy will stimulate much further discussion. The MIT course that he teaches with fellow professor Abhijit Bannerjee on development issues is routinely oversubscribed. And a long list of projects underway testifies to his staying power."
Acemoglu is the Gerschenkron of present-day economics. Gerschenkron was once cited by Subrahmanyam as being relevant to the "backward" Tai hinterlands of western mainland Southeast Asia (aka Burma aka Myanmar). Acemoglu may be someone with relevance to premodern political economy of mainland Southeast Asia. Can't even access his Wikipedia page, so here is the mirror from Answers.com. In "Why not a Political Coase Theorem" he argues that in politics the Coase Theorem breaks down due to commitment problems. "A Theory of Political Transitions"
(Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson September 2001, American Economic Review, volume 91, pp 938-963) sounds like it might address political succession, mathematically I hope. The paper "Kleptocracy and Divide-and-Rule: A Model of Personal Rule" (Daron Acemoglu, James A. Robinson and Thierry Verdier April 2004, forthcoming, Journal of the European Economic Association) looks like it might be relevant, since divide and rule is so frequently cited as a method of governance in mainland Southeast Asia and Yunnan. A lot of his papers are online. Here is the blurb from his new book Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Dec 2005):
"This book develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. Different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Thus democracy is preferred by the majority of citizens, but opposed by elites. Dictatorship nevertheless is not stable when citizens can threaten social disorder and revolution. In response, when the costs of repression are sufficiently high and promises of concessions are not credible, elites may be forced to create democracy. By democratizing, elites credibly transfer political power to the citizens, ensuring social stability. Democracy consolidates when elites do not have strong incentives to overthrow it. These processes depend on the strength of civil society, the structure of political institutions, the nature of political and economic crises, the level of economic inequality, the structure of the economy, and the form and extent of globalization."
Clearly, relevant to Burma. There is also a good description on his John Bates Clark Medal page. Here are some interesting extracts from an online review:
Extracted from: The Man Who Succeeded Gerschenkron
[Link to whole article]
"...Mathematization conquered the core of economics in the years before, during and after World War II. Then, both because of the power of formal reasoning and the prestige they conferred, those who espoused formal methods tackled the applied fields, one after the other. The mathematizers were not welcomed like so many liberators; acceptance was often grudging."
"Moreover, as mathematical technique was brought to bear, a reduction in detail took place. New insights were more easily transferred from field to field; new tools could be deployed quickly. But the study of institutions, which before mathematization had loomed so large, gradually was eclipsed..."
"...Hence the image of an hourglass that had been suggested by his colleague Paul Romer, with the scope or breadth of topical economics (on the horizontal axis), plotted against time (on the vertical axis). As the language of economics is unified, a dramatic narrowing of topical concerns takes place -- followed in turn by a commensurate widening, as speakers of the language learn to tackle topics that they had been temporarily unable to address. Kreps ventured in 1997, "Ć[T]he field now seems to be returning to something like the breadth of the discipline before World War II..."
"...He [Gerschenkron] had one big idea, and he made the most of it: the advantages of backwardness in economic development."
"Thorstein Veblen had said as much in telegraphic form in 1915 in Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution: late-adopters could sometimes move out to the frontiers of development more easily than the pioneers of the industrial revolution. Gerschenkron now made various forms of slow economic development his specialty. He himself, with his late start, having had to learn to work in two new languages as an adult, exemplified the possibilities. "The more backward a country," he wrote, "the more complex and exciting its industrial history.""
"...Yale's William Parker said, "The resounding theses of Gerschenkron tell the size and shape and weave of the stockings the family hangs out on Christmas eve, but say nothing of when or why Santa Claus comes down the chimney")...
"...Daron Acemoglu's good fortune was to graduate from the University of York at the very moment that the hourglass of development economics was at its narrowest, when all the complications of economic growth had been briefly reduced to an argument about the causes of "technical change.""
"Like Gerschenkron, Acemoglu had been raised in a developing society -- in Istanbul, a Turk of Armenian descent. His father was a professor of law, later an attorney for banks and corporations. Political economy and development strategy came naturally to the dinner table."
"But his parents died when Acemoglu was in his teens. Political science at York disappointed him; he switched to economics instead. And when MIT admitted him to graduate school but failed to offer a scholarship, he did his doctorate at the London School of Economics instead, writing a dissertation on a variety of labor and macroeconomic topics. A year later, MIT hired him to teach -- an intriguing but unknown quantity at whom they wanted a closer look. Four years later they gave him tenure. He added dual citizenship as well."
"The committee that gave the 38-year-old Acemoglu the Clark medal last week described him as "extremely broad and productive," noting that in the course of a dozen years he had made significant contributions to the study of labor markets before moving on to "especially innovative" ideas about the role of institutions in development and political economy."
"In fact, it was a series of investigations in the history of the European colonization of much of the rest of the world, beginning in the 15th century, that made Acemoglu's reputation, demonstrating that institutions of various sorts were more important to development than economists previously had thought. The "rules of the game" -- the structure of property rights, the presence of markets, and their various frictions, the form that governments take -- are key determinants of what happens next, Acemoglu showed, in some unusually inventive and convincing ways."
"Take the rise of Europe in the first place. The importance of the Atlantic trade had long been noted, and various reasons for it advanced. With Simon Johnson of MIT's Sloan School and James Robinson of the University of California at Berkeley, Acemoglu argued in "The Rise of Europe: Atlantic Trade, Institutional Change and Economic Growth" that England and the Netherlands leapt out front because a newly emergent merchant class benefited most from trade -- and was able to successfully demand institutions to protect their property and commerce. In contrast, although they had been the first to discover the richest lands, Spain and Portugal stagnated because their monarchies had managed to capture the early returns, they argued -- and thus were able to thwart their merchants' drive for power."
"In "Economic Backwardness in Political Perspective," Acemoglu and Robinson argued that political elites can be expected to pursue "blocking" strategies when innovation threatens their monopolies and when there is little threat to their power from politics. External threats reduced the temptation to block, they found -- producing a model that suggested why Britain, German and the United States had industrialized during the 19th century, while the landed aristocracies in Russia and Austria-Hungary sought to hold back the tide."
[Niall Ferguson in Colossus has a nice overview of this in his coverage of post-WWII Japanese and German development]
"In "Reversal of Fortune," Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson argued that colonial powers pursued very different strategies in different lands, with fateful consequences. In rich and densely populated countries such as Mexico and Peru, they extracted wealth; in poor and sparsely settled countries such as British North America and Argentina, they encouraged investment."
"And in "The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development" they inventively teased evidence from differing mortality rates faced by Europeans in different countries of how the choices made in those circumstanced gave rise to different institutions and so to different development paths."
"The Clark committee noted that some of the methods and conclusions were still being debated -- but that a broad and substantial rethinking of the development process was underway no matter what. The appearance this summer of Acemoglu's book with Robinson, The Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy will stimulate much further discussion. The MIT course that he teaches with fellow professor Abhijit Bannerjee on development issues is routinely oversubscribed. And a long list of projects underway testifies to his staying power."
Monday, August 28, 2006
Last British ambassador to Burma calls for comparative research
The Burmese Patient
By Vicky Bowman, British ambassador to Myanmar (2002-2006)
August 2006
Analyzes the current state of economic and political development within Burma using a analogy of disease and treatment of disease. A very balanced assessment and call for more research on Burmese politics and economic development using comparisons with Chile, Vietnam, China, Thailand and Korea.
"It would be a mistake to believe that there can be a miracle or rapid cure. Many other less developed and even better developed countries suffer from the same symptoms as Burma, such as poverty, corruption, inequality, unsustainable natural resource exploitation, lack of freedom, and a growing burden of HIV. Many countries are sicker than Burma on some or all of these counts. Treatment for systemic problems is never straightforward..."
"So we need more research, and more evaluation. In particular, we should review how countries such as Chile, Vietnam, China, Thailand and Korea recovered (or are recovering) from military and one-party dictatorship, and consider the relevance of that experience to Burma. And policies, whether they are implemented by the Burmese government, the international community, opposition or exiles; whether mass planting of physic nut bodies, banking sanctions, or banning ethnic languages from the primary school curriculum, should be openly and honestly evaluated for their short and long-term impacts and effectiveness. Lack of accountability is a big problem inside the country, but it is also a problem with the opposition and exiles. Audit should also include lessons to be learned from success stories, such as the shift in government attitudes to HIV/AIDS, and the boom in beans and pulse exports which has benefited dry zone farmers. In the latter case, an unusually laissez faire approach by the government, which allowed farmers to grow crops freely and respond to market mechanisms and incentives, supported by a domestic banking infrastructure which facilitates the work of brokers across the country, were key factors promoting economic growth....
...Full organ transplantation is a risky last resort. So more needs to be done to heal and strengthen Burma’s existing internal organs such as the education system, the judiciary and the police, through a diet of capacity-building. Unhealthily enlarged organs, such as the military, need to be reduced to the correct size so that they function more efficiently. And the backbone of civil society needs to be strengthened.
Pathology derives from the Greek word pathos, which means "suffering, feeling, emotion." These are common feelings for all who work to try and bring about change in Burma. But I believe we need to put emotions aside, and take a dispassionate look at the evidence, and draw appropriate conclusions.
By Vicky Bowman, British ambassador to Myanmar (2002-2006)
August 2006
Analyzes the current state of economic and political development within Burma using a analogy of disease and treatment of disease. A very balanced assessment and call for more research on Burmese politics and economic development using comparisons with Chile, Vietnam, China, Thailand and Korea.
How a study of pathology helps in an assessment of a sick nation’s problems
"Regardless of the motivation or qualifications of those prescribing the medicine, the main thing to remember is that our goal should be the Burmese patient’s sustainable recovery. This was brought home to me by a presentation at a recent Burma Day conference in Brussels, where one activist produced graphs to show that the campaign objectives of his organization had been increasingly achieved year-on-year. Yet the rest of us at the conference, Burmese and non-Burmese alike, had been standing around the patient’s bed all day unanimously agreeing that he had never looked in a worse state of health.""It would be a mistake to believe that there can be a miracle or rapid cure. Many other less developed and even better developed countries suffer from the same symptoms as Burma, such as poverty, corruption, inequality, unsustainable natural resource exploitation, lack of freedom, and a growing burden of HIV. Many countries are sicker than Burma on some or all of these counts. Treatment for systemic problems is never straightforward..."
"So we need more research, and more evaluation. In particular, we should review how countries such as Chile, Vietnam, China, Thailand and Korea recovered (or are recovering) from military and one-party dictatorship, and consider the relevance of that experience to Burma. And policies, whether they are implemented by the Burmese government, the international community, opposition or exiles; whether mass planting of physic nut bodies, banking sanctions, or banning ethnic languages from the primary school curriculum, should be openly and honestly evaluated for their short and long-term impacts and effectiveness. Lack of accountability is a big problem inside the country, but it is also a problem with the opposition and exiles. Audit should also include lessons to be learned from success stories, such as the shift in government attitudes to HIV/AIDS, and the boom in beans and pulse exports which has benefited dry zone farmers. In the latter case, an unusually laissez faire approach by the government, which allowed farmers to grow crops freely and respond to market mechanisms and incentives, supported by a domestic banking infrastructure which facilitates the work of brokers across the country, were key factors promoting economic growth....
...Full organ transplantation is a risky last resort. So more needs to be done to heal and strengthen Burma’s existing internal organs such as the education system, the judiciary and the police, through a diet of capacity-building. Unhealthily enlarged organs, such as the military, need to be reduced to the correct size so that they function more efficiently. And the backbone of civil society needs to be strengthened.
Pathology derives from the Greek word pathos, which means "suffering, feeling, emotion." These are common feelings for all who work to try and bring about change in Burma. But I believe we need to put emotions aside, and take a dispassionate look at the evidence, and draw appropriate conclusions.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Marx is intellectual history
Brad DeLong's blog makes some trenchant criticisms of Marx and Marxists and relegates it to "intellectual history" where it clearly belongs. Once again, I can't resist adding my two cents. I respect Marx as an important part of history, but his ideas resemble someone on hallucinogens. I remember in the German Ideology, his leisurely ideas about labour, fishing in the morning, tending cows in the afternoon,.....I found this very attractive when I was a freshman at university.
From Brad DeLong's blog:
"we find Michael Fitzgerald, a man who has seriously misprogrammed substantial chunks of his frontal lobes by reading Karl Marx's Capital--something that, I am becoming convinced, should only be done by somebody with immunity to the mental virus--by a trained intellectual or social or economic historian, or by a trained neoclassical economist....
Where does one begin? Let me make two observations only:
First, I observe that the idea that the best way to understand the political economy of the 1970s is through intensive, group, line-by-line study of an unfinished, inconsistent, and ambiguous text first drafted in the 1850s by a very smart, sometimes far-sighted, but definitely not divine human being--that that idea is already a delusion peculiar to those who were a little too good in school in seeking truths from reading books rather than seeking truths from facts.
Second, I observe that Marx's claim that the "twofold character of the commodity, as use-value and exchange-value," is a difficulty in need of "exploration" is a claim that can only be made by a deranged Hegelian mystic. Consider the following thought experiment:
Suppose that at my left hand I had a fresh-cooked hard-shell lobster and a lobster cracker. The lobster cracker would have a lot of use value to me right now: If I didn't have one, then half an hour from now my hands would be bleeding and cut--something I would rather avoid. I would be glad that I had it. But the lobster cracker would have little exchange-value: nobody nearby would exchange for it, would trade for it, anything I would particularly need or want.
Suppose that at my right hand I had a financial portfolio long the shares of residential construction companies, and short mortgage-backed securities. At the moment share of residential construction companies are low, but mortgage default premia are also low. If the shares of residential construction companies are fairly priced, than housing construction and housing prices are in free-fall, defaults on mortgages will rise, and the prices on mortgage-backed securities will fall as well--producing profits on the short position. If mortgage-backed securities are fairly priced, then defaults on mortgages will stay low and housing prices and construction will stay healthy, in which case shares of residential construction companies are underpriced--and there are profits to be expected from the long position. Such a portfolio would have no use-value at all. But it could well--if one could get the hedge ratios right--turn out to have a mighty exchange value, in the sense that other people would be willing to exchange for it, to trade for it, a lot of things I would like to have.
What's the mystery here? What's in need of "exploration"? Things are useful for two reasons (A) Because their physical nature is such that you find them directly useful--that's use value. (b) Because we live in a society in which other people will trade you things for them, things that you can use--that's exchange value. This is not hard to grasp. This is not particularly subtle.
Fitzgerald says that Marx's analysis of use-value and exchange-value "reveal[s] in an elementary form the contradictory character of capitalist production" which requires the abolition of private property and market exchange in order for the "mystical veil" of market prices to be stripped off "the life process of material production" and "production by freely associated men... consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan." In what sense is this dual role of commodities a "contradiction"? Marx never offered me a coherent answer. And Fitzgerald does no better. How would eliminating markets and prices help resolve this "contradiction"? That was never explained either
Moreover, in Fitzgerald's phrase "the contradictory character of capitalist production," the adjective "capitalist" is incorrect. A moment's look back at history reveals that the distinction between use-value and exchange-value is not something invented by or peculiar to the capitalist mode of production: it is found in all human societies, no matter how large or small.
The cattle slaughtered and cooked by the thralls of Hrothgar, King of the Geats, have use-value to Hrothgar: He and his family can eat (some of) them. The cattle have exchange-value to Hrothgar as well: He feeds them to his warriors at their nightly banquets in his great hall of Heorot. In exchange for livery and maintenance, the warriors fight Hrothgar's wars. Success in war gains Hrothgar more thralls, more cattle, and a bigger and better reputation as a great Drighten.
If you try to ground an analysis of capitalism-in-particular on a feature (the distinction between objects' direct usefulness and their role in social processes of reciprocity, redistribution, or market exchange) that capitalism shares with every other human social system--well, you won't get anywhere. And those who read Capital "in a group, out loud, line by line, paragraph by paragraph... discussing and arguing over every page, through volumes one, two and three, even unto Theories of Surplus Value" don't get anywhere at all."
My Comment: This sort of Marxist textual study really reminds me of bible study, which might be a good way to gain solidarity and power, something that conservatives seem to be a lot better at, but works against exactly what liberals do best, **questioning the existing order**, to the extent that liberals become doctrinaire, they don't seem to really be liberals anymore (Niall Ferguson in Colossus dares to question the liberal status quo though)
"Intellectual history" seems exactly the right way to read Marx along with the intellectuals who took him too seriously to the point of avoiding obvious signs that all was not what it was cracked up to be in Stalinist Russia (see Simone de Beauvoir's diaries or "Les Mandarins" including fights with a drunk Koestler).
The intellectual history of Marx and Marxists is still at the root of a lot of important ideas in the social sciences like the materialist conception of history, base-superstructure, Althusser's Ideological State Apparatuses, modes of production and the origins of the state, but so is Edmund Burke whose ideas can be seen in the important role Japanese era elites played in post-WWII South Korean economic history for instance. One of the reason's I enjoy reading Brad DeLong's blog is its pulling apart of the strong associations between economics and conservatism, at least here in Asia.
Introducing Serious, Permanent Bugs into Your Wetware
From Brad DeLong's blog:
"we find Michael Fitzgerald, a man who has seriously misprogrammed substantial chunks of his frontal lobes by reading Karl Marx's Capital--something that, I am becoming convinced, should only be done by somebody with immunity to the mental virus--by a trained intellectual or social or economic historian, or by a trained neoclassical economist....
Where does one begin? Let me make two observations only:
First, I observe that the idea that the best way to understand the political economy of the 1970s is through intensive, group, line-by-line study of an unfinished, inconsistent, and ambiguous text first drafted in the 1850s by a very smart, sometimes far-sighted, but definitely not divine human being--that that idea is already a delusion peculiar to those who were a little too good in school in seeking truths from reading books rather than seeking truths from facts.
Second, I observe that Marx's claim that the "twofold character of the commodity, as use-value and exchange-value," is a difficulty in need of "exploration" is a claim that can only be made by a deranged Hegelian mystic. Consider the following thought experiment:
Suppose that at my left hand I had a fresh-cooked hard-shell lobster and a lobster cracker. The lobster cracker would have a lot of use value to me right now: If I didn't have one, then half an hour from now my hands would be bleeding and cut--something I would rather avoid. I would be glad that I had it. But the lobster cracker would have little exchange-value: nobody nearby would exchange for it, would trade for it, anything I would particularly need or want.
Suppose that at my right hand I had a financial portfolio long the shares of residential construction companies, and short mortgage-backed securities. At the moment share of residential construction companies are low, but mortgage default premia are also low. If the shares of residential construction companies are fairly priced, than housing construction and housing prices are in free-fall, defaults on mortgages will rise, and the prices on mortgage-backed securities will fall as well--producing profits on the short position. If mortgage-backed securities are fairly priced, then defaults on mortgages will stay low and housing prices and construction will stay healthy, in which case shares of residential construction companies are underpriced--and there are profits to be expected from the long position. Such a portfolio would have no use-value at all. But it could well--if one could get the hedge ratios right--turn out to have a mighty exchange value, in the sense that other people would be willing to exchange for it, to trade for it, a lot of things I would like to have.
What's the mystery here? What's in need of "exploration"? Things are useful for two reasons (A) Because their physical nature is such that you find them directly useful--that's use value. (b) Because we live in a society in which other people will trade you things for them, things that you can use--that's exchange value. This is not hard to grasp. This is not particularly subtle.
Fitzgerald says that Marx's analysis of use-value and exchange-value "reveal[s] in an elementary form the contradictory character of capitalist production" which requires the abolition of private property and market exchange in order for the "mystical veil" of market prices to be stripped off "the life process of material production" and "production by freely associated men... consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan." In what sense is this dual role of commodities a "contradiction"? Marx never offered me a coherent answer. And Fitzgerald does no better. How would eliminating markets and prices help resolve this "contradiction"? That was never explained either
Moreover, in Fitzgerald's phrase "the contradictory character of capitalist production," the adjective "capitalist" is incorrect. A moment's look back at history reveals that the distinction between use-value and exchange-value is not something invented by or peculiar to the capitalist mode of production: it is found in all human societies, no matter how large or small.
The cattle slaughtered and cooked by the thralls of Hrothgar, King of the Geats, have use-value to Hrothgar: He and his family can eat (some of) them. The cattle have exchange-value to Hrothgar as well: He feeds them to his warriors at their nightly banquets in his great hall of Heorot. In exchange for livery and maintenance, the warriors fight Hrothgar's wars. Success in war gains Hrothgar more thralls, more cattle, and a bigger and better reputation as a great Drighten.
If you try to ground an analysis of capitalism-in-particular on a feature (the distinction between objects' direct usefulness and their role in social processes of reciprocity, redistribution, or market exchange) that capitalism shares with every other human social system--well, you won't get anywhere. And those who read Capital "in a group, out loud, line by line, paragraph by paragraph... discussing and arguing over every page, through volumes one, two and three, even unto Theories of Surplus Value" don't get anywhere at all."
My Comment: This sort of Marxist textual study really reminds me of bible study, which might be a good way to gain solidarity and power, something that conservatives seem to be a lot better at, but works against exactly what liberals do best, **questioning the existing order**, to the extent that liberals become doctrinaire, they don't seem to really be liberals anymore (Niall Ferguson in Colossus dares to question the liberal status quo though)
"Intellectual history" seems exactly the right way to read Marx along with the intellectuals who took him too seriously to the point of avoiding obvious signs that all was not what it was cracked up to be in Stalinist Russia (see Simone de Beauvoir's diaries or "Les Mandarins" including fights with a drunk Koestler).
The intellectual history of Marx and Marxists is still at the root of a lot of important ideas in the social sciences like the materialist conception of history, base-superstructure, Althusser's Ideological State Apparatuses, modes of production and the origins of the state, but so is Edmund Burke whose ideas can be seen in the important role Japanese era elites played in post-WWII South Korean economic history for instance. One of the reason's I enjoy reading Brad DeLong's blog is its pulling apart of the strong associations between economics and conservatism, at least here in Asia.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Mong Mao: The multiple senses of the toponym
Below is copy of the Wikipedia article in which I try to make clear what Mong Mao means. I am just trying to make clear the different ways that people use the often ambiguous, or at least multi-sensed, term "Mong Mao".
Mong Mao
Mong Mao was an ethnically Tai state that controlled several smaller Tai states or chieftainships along the frontier of what is now Myanmar and China in the De-hong region of Yunnan with a capital near the modern-day border town of Ruili. The name of the main river in this region is named the Nam Mao River also know as the Shweli River.
The chronicle of this region, which was written much later, was named the Mong Mao Chronicle. [1]
Mong Mao arose in the power vaccuum left after the Kingdom of Dali in Yunnan fell to the Mongols around 1254. This kingdom had asserted some unity over the diversity of ethnic groups residing along the southwest frontier of Yunnan. (Daniels, 2006, 28)
"Mong Mao" is sometimes used by authors to refer to the entire group of Tai states along the Chinese-Myanmar frontier including Luchuan-Pingmian, Mong Yang (Chinese: Meng Yang), and Hsenwi (Chinese: Mu Bang), even though specific place names are almost always used in Ming and Burmese sources.
The center of power shifted frequently between these different places. Sometimes these were unified under one strong leader, sometimes they were not. As the Shan scholar Sai Kam Mong observes: "Sometimes one of these strove to be the leading kingdom and sometimes all of them were unified into one single kingdom...The capital of the kingdom shifted from place to place, but most of them were located near the Nam Mao [river] (the "Shweli" on most maps today)" [2]
The various versions of the Mong Mao Chronicle provide the lineage of Mong Mao rulers. The Shan chronicle tradition recorded very early and roughly by Elias (1876) provides a long list with the first ruler of Mong Mao dating from 568 A.D. The dates in Elias for later rulers of Mong Mao do not match the dates in Ming dynasty sources such as the Ming Shi-lu (Wade, 2005) and the Bai-yi Zhuan (Wade, 1996) which are considered more reliable from the time of the ruler Si Ke Fa. Kazhangjia (1990), translated into Thai by Witthayasakphan and Zhao Hong Yun (2001), also provides a fairly detailed local chronicle of Mong Mao.
[edit]
List of Monarchs
Chinese name Years Length Succession Death Tai Name Other names
Si Ke Fa 1340-1371 31 years natural Hso Kip Hpa Sa Khaan Pha
Zhao Bing Fa 1371-1378 8 years son natural
Tai Bian 1378/79 1 year son murdered
Zhao Xiao Fa 1379/80 1 year brother of Zhao Bing Fa murdered
Si Wa Fa ? ? brother murdered Hso Wak Hpa
Si Lun Fa 1382-1399 17 years grandson of Si Ke Fa Hso Long Hpa
Si Xing Fa 1404-1413 9 years son abdicated
Si Ren Fa 1413-1445/6 29 years brother executed Hso Wen Hpa Sa Ngam Pha
Si Ji Fa 1445/6-1449 son executed Sa Ki Pha, Chau Si Pha
Si Bu Fa 1449-?
Si Lun Fa ?-1532 murdered Sawlon
References
Daniels, Christian (2006) "Historical memories of a Chinese adventurer in a Tay chronicle; Usurpation of the throne of a Tay polity in Yunnan, 1573-1584," International Journal of Asian Studies, 3, 1 (2006), pp. 21-48.
Elias, N. (1876) Introductory Sketch of the History of the Shans in Upper Burma and Western Yunnan. Calcutta: Foreign Department Press. (Recent facsimile Reprint by Thai government in Chiang Mai University library).
Jiang Yingliang (1983) Daizu Shi [History of the Dai ethnicity], Chengdu: Sichuan Renmin Chubanshe.
Kazhangjia, Z. (1990). "Hemeng gumeng: Meng Mao gudai zhuwang shi [A History of the Kings of Meng Mao]." In Meng Guozhanbi ji Meng Mao gudai zhuwang shi [History of Kosampi and the kings of Meng Mao]. Gong Xiao Zheng. (tr.) Kunming, Yunnan, Yunnan Minzu Chubanshe.
Liew, Foon Ming. (1996) "The Luchuan-Pingmian Campaigns (1436-1449): In the Light of Official Chinese Historiography". Oriens Extremus 39/2, pp. 162-203.
Sai Kam Mong (2004) The History and Development of the Shan Scripts, Chiang Mai; Silkworm Books.
Wade, Geoff (1996) "The Bai Yi Zhuan: A Chinese Account of Tai Society in the 14th Century," 14th Conference of the International Association of Historians of Asia (IAHA), Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand [Includes a complete translation and introduction to the Ming travelogue "Bai-yi Zhuan", a copy can be found at the Thailand Information Center at Chulalongkorn Central Library]]
Wade, Geoff. tr. (2005) Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu: an open access resource, Singapore: Asia Research Institute and the Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/
Witthayasakphan, Sompong and Zhao Hong Yun (translators and editors) (2001) Phongsawadan Muang Tai (Khreua Muang ku muang), Chiang Mai: Silkworm. (Translation of Mong Mao chronicle into the Thai language)
Notes
^ Elias, 1876; Daniels, 2006; Kazhangjia, 1990; Witthayasakphan and Zhao Hong Yun, 2001
^ Sai Kam Mong, 2004, p. 10, citing Jiang Yingliang, 1983
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mong_Mao"
Mong Mao
Mong Mao was an ethnically Tai state that controlled several smaller Tai states or chieftainships along the frontier of what is now Myanmar and China in the De-hong region of Yunnan with a capital near the modern-day border town of Ruili. The name of the main river in this region is named the Nam Mao River also know as the Shweli River.
The chronicle of this region, which was written much later, was named the Mong Mao Chronicle. [1]
Mong Mao arose in the power vaccuum left after the Kingdom of Dali in Yunnan fell to the Mongols around 1254. This kingdom had asserted some unity over the diversity of ethnic groups residing along the southwest frontier of Yunnan. (Daniels, 2006, 28)
"Mong Mao" is sometimes used by authors to refer to the entire group of Tai states along the Chinese-Myanmar frontier including Luchuan-Pingmian, Mong Yang (Chinese: Meng Yang), and Hsenwi (Chinese: Mu Bang), even though specific place names are almost always used in Ming and Burmese sources.
The center of power shifted frequently between these different places. Sometimes these were unified under one strong leader, sometimes they were not. As the Shan scholar Sai Kam Mong observes: "Sometimes one of these strove to be the leading kingdom and sometimes all of them were unified into one single kingdom...The capital of the kingdom shifted from place to place, but most of them were located near the Nam Mao [river] (the "Shweli" on most maps today)" [2]
The various versions of the Mong Mao Chronicle provide the lineage of Mong Mao rulers. The Shan chronicle tradition recorded very early and roughly by Elias (1876) provides a long list with the first ruler of Mong Mao dating from 568 A.D. The dates in Elias for later rulers of Mong Mao do not match the dates in Ming dynasty sources such as the Ming Shi-lu (Wade, 2005) and the Bai-yi Zhuan (Wade, 1996) which are considered more reliable from the time of the ruler Si Ke Fa. Kazhangjia (1990), translated into Thai by Witthayasakphan and Zhao Hong Yun (2001), also provides a fairly detailed local chronicle of Mong Mao.
[edit]
List of Monarchs
Chinese name Years Length Succession Death Tai Name Other names
Si Ke Fa 1340-1371 31 years natural Hso Kip Hpa Sa Khaan Pha
Zhao Bing Fa 1371-1378 8 years son natural
Tai Bian 1378/79 1 year son murdered
Zhao Xiao Fa 1379/80 1 year brother of Zhao Bing Fa murdered
Si Wa Fa ? ? brother murdered Hso Wak Hpa
Si Lun Fa 1382-1399 17 years grandson of Si Ke Fa Hso Long Hpa
Si Xing Fa 1404-1413 9 years son abdicated
Si Ren Fa 1413-1445/6 29 years brother executed Hso Wen Hpa Sa Ngam Pha
Si Ji Fa 1445/6-1449 son executed Sa Ki Pha, Chau Si Pha
Si Bu Fa 1449-?
Si Lun Fa ?-1532 murdered Sawlon
References
Daniels, Christian (2006) "Historical memories of a Chinese adventurer in a Tay chronicle; Usurpation of the throne of a Tay polity in Yunnan, 1573-1584," International Journal of Asian Studies, 3, 1 (2006), pp. 21-48.
Elias, N. (1876) Introductory Sketch of the History of the Shans in Upper Burma and Western Yunnan. Calcutta: Foreign Department Press. (Recent facsimile Reprint by Thai government in Chiang Mai University library).
Jiang Yingliang (1983) Daizu Shi [History of the Dai ethnicity], Chengdu: Sichuan Renmin Chubanshe.
Kazhangjia, Z. (1990). "Hemeng gumeng: Meng Mao gudai zhuwang shi [A History of the Kings of Meng Mao]." In Meng Guozhanbi ji Meng Mao gudai zhuwang shi [History of Kosampi and the kings of Meng Mao]. Gong Xiao Zheng. (tr.) Kunming, Yunnan, Yunnan Minzu Chubanshe.
Liew, Foon Ming. (1996) "The Luchuan-Pingmian Campaigns (1436-1449): In the Light of Official Chinese Historiography". Oriens Extremus 39/2, pp. 162-203.
Sai Kam Mong (2004) The History and Development of the Shan Scripts, Chiang Mai; Silkworm Books.
Wade, Geoff (1996) "The Bai Yi Zhuan: A Chinese Account of Tai Society in the 14th Century," 14th Conference of the International Association of Historians of Asia (IAHA), Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand [Includes a complete translation and introduction to the Ming travelogue "Bai-yi Zhuan", a copy can be found at the Thailand Information Center at Chulalongkorn Central Library]]
Wade, Geoff. tr. (2005) Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu: an open access resource, Singapore: Asia Research Institute and the Singapore E-Press, National University of Singapore, http://epress.nus.edu.sg/msl/
Witthayasakphan, Sompong and Zhao Hong Yun (translators and editors) (2001) Phongsawadan Muang Tai (Khreua Muang ku muang), Chiang Mai: Silkworm. (Translation of Mong Mao chronicle into the Thai language)
Notes
^ Elias, 1876; Daniels, 2006; Kazhangjia, 1990; Witthayasakphan and Zhao Hong Yun, 2001
^ Sai Kam Mong, 2004, p. 10, citing Jiang Yingliang, 1983
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mong_Mao"
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Christian Daniels paper on Tai chronicle history (1573-1584)
Daniels, Christian (2006) "Historical memories of a Chinese adventurer in a Tay chronicle; Usurpation of the throne of a Tay polity in Yunnan, 1573-1584," International Journal of Asian Studies, 3, 1 (2006), pp. 21-48.
This historical analysis is path breaking because it deals with Tai chronicle text on its own terms, taking it for the uniquely different historical source that it is, and showing how the Tai chronicle approach to history helps elucidate Rankean "what actually happened".
Daniels clearly shows that the Ming did use a strategy of divide and conquer in the Tai-Yunnan frontier zone. He also provides convincing evidence that a Mong Mao kingdom (state or polity) was a unifying force among the smaller geographically based chieftainships of the Tai-Yunnan frontier zone. Si Ke Fa (r. 1340-1371) clearly brought these chieftainships together for a time under the umbrella of one ruler and challenged Yuan rule along the frontier.
The paper also includes an important discussion of the "Subordination of Tay polities to the Ming" that is rigorous in both its argument and the evidence that it presents. Since events along the Tai-Yunnan frontier region played an important role in state formation in western mainland Southeast Asia to the south, namely in the formation of a Burmese state (c. 1350-1600), this section of the paper is particularly important for early modern mainland Southeast Asian history.
This is not to say that various geographically-based chieftainships (Daniels provides a wonderful map) did not rally together under the leadership of one primus-inter-pares Tai ruler during times of crisis when they faced a common threat. This is where the Di Cosmo-Andreski model of military mobilization and centraliation after a crisis (originating in analogous behavior along China's northern frontier) is pertinent (Fernquest, 2005).
It seems that the Mong Mao kingdom may be largely a literary creation of the Tai chronicle writers interpreting historical fact:
There are references to a "Mong Mao" is Burmese inscriptions and the chronicle, but there are also references to a "Syam" and many more references to individual polities, especially as times goes by. If Burmese references to Tai polities on the Yunnan frontier became more geographically specific, this would probably support a hypothesis that Ming split apart a polity or confederation of chieftainships that was previously more unified, or maybe a hypothesis that the Burmese only gradually became aware of who was attacking them. This would not be easy, if a coalition was attacking them. In such a case, local identities might have loomed larger than group identities as they seemed to have done when Si Lun Fa (Burmese: Sawlon) of Mong Yang [Burmese: Mohnyin] conquered Ava in 1524-27.
As Wade (2004, 31) shows, the fact that Ayutthaya and Lang Chang to the south eventually grew to achieve the status of states, has led some intellectuals to produce counterfactual or "virtual" history, suggesting that the chieftainships of the Tai-Yunnan border would have become large and unified states like Ayutthaya or Lang Chang, but didn't, because of Ming expansionism.
After the Tai invasion of the Burmese heartland in 1524-27, it looked like there would be a large Tai territorial state in western mainland Southeast Asia, but the resurgence of the Burmese state under Bayinnaung (r. 1551-1581) put an end to this state-forming momentum. There is always an impulse to look at these events with hindsight bias from the viewpoint of a given modern nation state or ethnic group, to moralize and lament about what could have been, but wasn't. This emic perspective, of historical as seen from inside by actual participants during and afterwards, is certainly one legitimate perspective, history was originally my written from such national or state-centric perspectives, but an emotionally uninvolved etic perspective, that tries to make sense of the events from a "World History" perspective, also seems legitimate in this day and age.
Evidence from the Burmese chronicle indicates that the Tai chieftainships Hsenwi and Mong Yang acted independently from any unified Mong Mao center in the warfare they engaged in with Burmese Ava to the south.
(Note: Theinni, Hsenwi, and Mu Bang all refer to the same geographically based chieftainship. Mohnyin, Mong Yang, and Meng Yang so as well.)
(Note: I'll make a list of all Burmese chronicle references to Tai polities from the fall of Pagan to the end of the Luchuan-Pingmian campaigns (1444) to demonstrate this point. )
Ava attacked Tai settlements and Tais attacked Ava's capital, far away from their home base in Yunnan, deep in the Burmese heartland. (See Fernquest, 2006)
Tai cavalry contingents also participated in Ava's military expeditions against the Mon kingdom ruled by Rajadharit in the far south. Whether this was a voluntary mercenary type of relationship or coerced troop levies, or a combination of both, is not clear, there is evidence to support both theories (Fernquest, 2006, 17).
The nature of control imposed after military action is also an issue in the warfare the Burmese king Bayinnaung (r. 1551-1581) later waged against Ayutthaya. The Burmese kingdom did not maintain territorial control for any length of time, so the Burmese kingdom could not be called an empire and this warfare really doesn’t warrant the label "expansionary" in that this term implies increased territorial control. The Burmese attacks against Ayutthaya were more like once off "raids" for manpower and plunder. I believe that Prince Damrong makes this point in "Thai Rop Bama" [Thai attacks Burma]. It is only later on in the 1570s that you see Burma trying to assert geographical control over Chiang Mai and Lan Chang. Lieberman makes this point in Burmese Administrative Cycles, I believe.
Fernquest, Jon (2005) "Min-gyi-nyo, the Shan Invasions of Ava(1524-27), and the Beginnings of Expansionary Warfare in Toungoo Burma: 1486-1539," SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 3.2 Autumn. [Addendum]
Fernquest, Jon (2006) "Rajadhirat's mask of command: Burmese military leadership, (c. 1383-1421)," SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, 4.1 Spring.
Wade, Geoff (2004) "Ming China and Southeast Asia in the 15th Century: A Reappraisal," No. 28 Working Paper Series, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, July 2004.
This historical analysis is path breaking because it deals with Tai chronicle text on its own terms, taking it for the uniquely different historical source that it is, and showing how the Tai chronicle approach to history helps elucidate Rankean "what actually happened".
Daniels clearly shows that the Ming did use a strategy of divide and conquer in the Tai-Yunnan frontier zone. He also provides convincing evidence that a Mong Mao kingdom (state or polity) was a unifying force among the smaller geographically based chieftainships of the Tai-Yunnan frontier zone. Si Ke Fa (r. 1340-1371) clearly brought these chieftainships together for a time under the umbrella of one ruler and challenged Yuan rule along the frontier.
The paper also includes an important discussion of the "Subordination of Tay polities to the Ming" that is rigorous in both its argument and the evidence that it presents. Since events along the Tai-Yunnan frontier region played an important role in state formation in western mainland Southeast Asia to the south, namely in the formation of a Burmese state (c. 1350-1600), this section of the paper is particularly important for early modern mainland Southeast Asian history.
Tai rule along the Tai-Yunnan frontier: Unified or not unified?
What I take issue with, was how long this unification under a Mong Mao "kingdom" actually lasted. It seems like there was a unified Mong Mao kingdom (polity, state) only for the duration of Si Ke Fa's reign.This is not to say that various geographically-based chieftainships (Daniels provides a wonderful map) did not rally together under the leadership of one primus-inter-pares Tai ruler during times of crisis when they faced a common threat. This is where the Di Cosmo-Andreski model of military mobilization and centraliation after a crisis (originating in analogous behavior along China's northern frontier) is pertinent (Fernquest, 2005).
It seems that the Mong Mao kingdom may be largely a literary creation of the Tai chronicle writers interpreting historical fact:
"The Mang Maaw Chronicle [Mong Mao Chronicle] referred to this kingdom as unifying force among the Tay, and portrayed it as a sort of ideal age when the Tay enjoyed complete independence, and remained free from intervention by outside regional powers. The chronicler invokes the disintegration and the subsequent subordination of Tay polities to China and Burma as recurring potent images." (Daniels, 2006, p. 28)
There are references to a "Mong Mao" is Burmese inscriptions and the chronicle, but there are also references to a "Syam" and many more references to individual polities, especially as times goes by. If Burmese references to Tai polities on the Yunnan frontier became more geographically specific, this would probably support a hypothesis that Ming split apart a polity or confederation of chieftainships that was previously more unified, or maybe a hypothesis that the Burmese only gradually became aware of who was attacking them. This would not be easy, if a coalition was attacking them. In such a case, local identities might have loomed larger than group identities as they seemed to have done when Si Lun Fa (Burmese: Sawlon) of Mong Yang [Burmese: Mohnyin] conquered Ava in 1524-27.
As Wade (2004, 31) shows, the fact that Ayutthaya and Lang Chang to the south eventually grew to achieve the status of states, has led some intellectuals to produce counterfactual or "virtual" history, suggesting that the chieftainships of the Tai-Yunnan border would have become large and unified states like Ayutthaya or Lang Chang, but didn't, because of Ming expansionism.
After the Tai invasion of the Burmese heartland in 1524-27, it looked like there would be a large Tai territorial state in western mainland Southeast Asia, but the resurgence of the Burmese state under Bayinnaung (r. 1551-1581) put an end to this state-forming momentum. There is always an impulse to look at these events with hindsight bias from the viewpoint of a given modern nation state or ethnic group, to moralize and lament about what could have been, but wasn't. This emic perspective, of historical as seen from inside by actual participants during and afterwards, is certainly one legitimate perspective, history was originally my written from such national or state-centric perspectives, but an emotionally uninvolved etic perspective, that tries to make sense of the events from a "World History" perspective, also seems legitimate in this day and age.
Augmenting the Daniels argument with Burmese sources
Widening the gamut of historical sources used for this period to include Burmese sources reveals some important facts. Take this observation:"The Mang Maaw kingdom...maintained firm control over all the Tay polities, and it was only after the Ming succeeded in eliminating it in their fourth punitive military campaign of 1444 that Tay polities west of the Salween River emerged as individually prominent political entities." (Daniels, 2006, p. 28)
Evidence from the Burmese chronicle indicates that the Tai chieftainships Hsenwi and Mong Yang acted independently from any unified Mong Mao center in the warfare they engaged in with Burmese Ava to the south.
(Note: Theinni, Hsenwi, and Mu Bang all refer to the same geographically based chieftainship. Mohnyin, Mong Yang, and Meng Yang so as well.)
(Note: I'll make a list of all Burmese chronicle references to Tai polities from the fall of Pagan to the end of the Luchuan-Pingmian campaigns (1444) to demonstrate this point. )
Ava attacked Tai settlements and Tais attacked Ava's capital, far away from their home base in Yunnan, deep in the Burmese heartland. (See Fernquest, 2006)
Tai cavalry contingents also participated in Ava's military expeditions against the Mon kingdom ruled by Rajadharit in the far south. Whether this was a voluntary mercenary type of relationship or coerced troop levies, or a combination of both, is not clear, there is evidence to support both theories (Fernquest, 2006, 17).
The nature of control imposed after military action is also an issue in the warfare the Burmese king Bayinnaung (r. 1551-1581) later waged against Ayutthaya. The Burmese kingdom did not maintain territorial control for any length of time, so the Burmese kingdom could not be called an empire and this warfare really doesn’t warrant the label "expansionary" in that this term implies increased territorial control. The Burmese attacks against Ayutthaya were more like once off "raids" for manpower and plunder. I believe that Prince Damrong makes this point in "Thai Rop Bama" [Thai attacks Burma]. It is only later on in the 1570s that you see Burma trying to assert geographical control over Chiang Mai and Lan Chang. Lieberman makes this point in Burmese Administrative Cycles, I believe.
References
Daniels, Christian (2006) "Historical memories of a Chinese adventurer in a Tay chronicle; Usurpation of the throne of a Tay polity in Yunnan, 1573-1584," International Journal of Asian Studies, 3, 1 (2006), pp. 21-48.Fernquest, Jon (2005) "Min-gyi-nyo, the Shan Invasions of Ava(1524-27), and the Beginnings of Expansionary Warfare in Toungoo Burma: 1486-1539," SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 3.2 Autumn. [Addendum]
Fernquest, Jon (2006) "Rajadhirat's mask of command: Burmese military leadership, (c. 1383-1421)," SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, 4.1 Spring.
Wade, Geoff (2004) "Ming China and Southeast Asia in the 15th Century: A Reappraisal," No. 28 Working Paper Series, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, July 2004.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Myanmar Film Festival and plans for a Bayinnaung film in Burmese
After reading a bit, I still decided to write a Wikipedia article on cinema of Myanmar.
Many people have apparently been persecuted for their political beliefs in the Burmese film industry, so writing anything about it is like handling dynamite. The recent history reads like something out the McCarthy era in the United States.
Having read Burmese language books on Burma's early film industry though, I know there is a very interesting and positive history to be written here for the earlier periods at least.
A festival of Myanmar films will run from August 17 to 20 in Bangkok at the Major Ramkhamhaeng. All the films were directed by Kyi Soe Tun and have English subtitles.
Read about the film festival in the Bangkok Post (deleted in one week) and the People's Daily Online (see below).
The Burmese filmmaker Kyi Soe Tun has made historical epics on the Pagan and late Konbaung periods and plans to make a film similar to MC Chatreechalerm Yukol's "The Legend of King Naresuan" that will "tell the same story from Burengnong's [Bayinnaung's] point of view." Kyi Soe Tun is friends with MC Chatreechalerm Yukol and the script for his planned film has been finished for three years. He's currently looking for financing for the film.
Note, that I transcribed some classic Burmese film scripts, including one by Kyi Soe Tun I believe, into computer readable form and put them online several years ago. They are a good way to become familiar with the spoken Burmese language and are available online at this rather slow site.
Note also that there are no Wikipedia pages yet for Myanmar cinema. Branching off Southeast Asian cinema would be the right place to begin. Obviously, an entry has to be made for the actor Kyaw Hein. There's an article in the online Irrawaddy Magazine that provides a lot of historical background that could provide the basis for a beginning Wikipedia "stub" on Burmese or Myanmar cinema.
The first ever Myanmar film festival abroad will be held in Bangkok, Thailand in May, aimed at expanding the market for Myanmar films overseas, sources with the film industry circle said Friday.
Five movies will be screened in the Myanmar film festival scheduled for the second week of May, Director U Kyi Soe Tun, who is also Chairman of the Myanmar Motion Picture Organization, told Xinhua in an interview.
The films, all directed by Kyi Soe Tun himself, are titled "No Longer Slaves of Others", "Sacrificial Hearts", "The Upstream", " True Love" and "Hexagon".
Meanwhile, as part of its bid to penetrate the international film industry market, Myanmar entered Chinese film festivals with three Myanmar films during the last six years, namely, "Master of Flowers" screened in 2001, "The Hearts of the Givers" in September 2004's Yinchuan Film Festival and "Mystery of the Snow Story" in November 2005's Chinese Golden Rooster Hundred Flower Film Festival.
In 2004, Myanmar also introduced to Malaysian audience " Kyansittmin", a movie based on the life of the ancient Bagan era monarch King Kyansittha who reigned from 1084 to 1113.
To upgrade Myanmar film, Myanmar, in cooperation with Japan, jointly produced a film titled "Thway" (blood) and released in 2003.
To encourage Myanmar film production and bring up the quality, the Myanmar government presents yearly motion picture academy awards to successful artists and in December last year the government presented 11 such awards for 2004 out of 27 movies produced during the year.
Of the 11 film awards, "Mystery of the Snow Story" received the best film award. The film, which had been presented at film festivals held in Singapore, South Africa and China, was shot at a snow-capped mountain in northwestern Myanmar's Chin state. (Source: Xinhua)
Many people have apparently been persecuted for their political beliefs in the Burmese film industry, so writing anything about it is like handling dynamite. The recent history reads like something out the McCarthy era in the United States.
Having read Burmese language books on Burma's early film industry though, I know there is a very interesting and positive history to be written here for the earlier periods at least.
A festival of Myanmar films will run from August 17 to 20 in Bangkok at the Major Ramkhamhaeng. All the films were directed by Kyi Soe Tun and have English subtitles.
Read about the film festival in the Bangkok Post (deleted in one week) and the People's Daily Online (see below).
The Burmese filmmaker Kyi Soe Tun has made historical epics on the Pagan and late Konbaung periods and plans to make a film similar to MC Chatreechalerm Yukol's "The Legend of King Naresuan" that will "tell the same story from Burengnong's [Bayinnaung's] point of view." Kyi Soe Tun is friends with MC Chatreechalerm Yukol and the script for his planned film has been finished for three years. He's currently looking for financing for the film.
Note, that I transcribed some classic Burmese film scripts, including one by Kyi Soe Tun I believe, into computer readable form and put them online several years ago. They are a good way to become familiar with the spoken Burmese language and are available online at this rather slow site.
Note also that there are no Wikipedia pages yet for Myanmar cinema. Branching off Southeast Asian cinema would be the right place to begin. Obviously, an entry has to be made for the actor Kyaw Hein. There's an article in the online Irrawaddy Magazine that provides a lot of historical background that could provide the basis for a beginning Wikipedia "stub" on Burmese or Myanmar cinema.
Myanmar film festival to be held in Bangkok
The first ever Myanmar film festival abroad will be held in Bangkok, Thailand in May, aimed at expanding the market for Myanmar films overseas, sources with the film industry circle said Friday.
Five movies will be screened in the Myanmar film festival scheduled for the second week of May, Director U Kyi Soe Tun, who is also Chairman of the Myanmar Motion Picture Organization, told Xinhua in an interview.
The films, all directed by Kyi Soe Tun himself, are titled "No Longer Slaves of Others", "Sacrificial Hearts", "The Upstream", " True Love" and "Hexagon".
Meanwhile, as part of its bid to penetrate the international film industry market, Myanmar entered Chinese film festivals with three Myanmar films during the last six years, namely, "Master of Flowers" screened in 2001, "The Hearts of the Givers" in September 2004's Yinchuan Film Festival and "Mystery of the Snow Story" in November 2005's Chinese Golden Rooster Hundred Flower Film Festival.
In 2004, Myanmar also introduced to Malaysian audience " Kyansittmin", a movie based on the life of the ancient Bagan era monarch King Kyansittha who reigned from 1084 to 1113.
To upgrade Myanmar film, Myanmar, in cooperation with Japan, jointly produced a film titled "Thway" (blood) and released in 2003.
To encourage Myanmar film production and bring up the quality, the Myanmar government presents yearly motion picture academy awards to successful artists and in December last year the government presented 11 such awards for 2004 out of 27 movies produced during the year.
Of the 11 film awards, "Mystery of the Snow Story" received the best film award. The film, which had been presented at film festivals held in Singapore, South Africa and China, was shot at a snow-capped mountain in northwestern Myanmar's Chin state. (Source: Xinhua)
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