New Survey of Burmese-Thai History Online

THE CHANGING NATURE OF CONFLICT BETWEEN BURMA AND SIAM AS SEEN FROM THE GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF BURMESE STATES FROM THE 16TH TO THE 19TH CENTURIES
By Pamaree Surakiat

[Link to paper]

Finally there is a thorough survey of Burmese history available to everyone for free online for the important 500 years from from 1300 to 1800. Wikipedia writers will finally be able to write extensive and reliable articles on Burmese history.

The era of Burma's history stretching from the fall of Pagan to the Konbaung period and the arrival of the British on the scene around 1800 is under-documented compared with the other periods, but a lot of important transformations happened during this period as Lieberman's Strange Parallels shows. Here's the abstract:

"This paper proposes a new historical interpretation of pre-modern relations between Burma and Siam by analyzing these relations within the historical context of the formation of Burmese states: the first Toungoo, the restored Toungoo and the early Konbaung empires, respectively. The main argument is that the conflictive conditions leading to the military confrontation between Burma and Siam from the 16th to 19th centuries were dynamic. The changing nature of Burmese states’ conflict with Siam was contingent firstly on the internal condition of Burmese courts’ power over lower Burma and secondly on the external condition of international maritime trade. The paper discusses this in seven parts: I Introduction; II Previous studies: some limitations; III Post-Pagan to pre-Toungoo period; IV The first Toungoo empire: the outbreak of Burmese-Siamese warfare; V The restored Toungoo empire: Mandala without Ayutthaya; VI The early Konbaung empire: regaining control of Ayutthaya; and VII The early Konbaung empire: Southward expansion to the Malay Peninsula" (abstract, paper).

Even if you've already read widely on the subject, the paper provides fresh perspectives on certain issues, does an extensive review of the literature if you're a graduate student, and also reminds one of information that is easy to overlook, like it remninded me that Dhammazedi, besides his patronage of Buddhism, also built temples to local Mon precursors of the 37 nats, local gods. The great late Mon linguist at SOAS Shorto did work on this.