The Burma Road to Poverty

Although political upheavals and mass killings in the Socialist Republic of Burma (Myanmar) have received a great deal of international attention, scholars and journalists until now have failed to identify the underlying factors that produced this situation and helped to maintain military dictatorship under Ne Win's successors. Mya Maung looks into the deeper sources of Burmese behaviour, focusing on the ancient tradition of sacred despotic rule, the undermining of social and cultural life during the British colonial period, and the impact of conflicting cultural realities on a Communist military elite whose attempts to reinstate absolute authority compounded their mismanagement of economic development.