Abstract
‘There probably was corruption in colonial times, but it wasn’t as bad as today.’ These were the thoughts of a Yangon resident who I spoke to about my research during the frantic weeks I spent there, most of which I passed shut away in the national archives of Myanmar. These were sentiments shared by others I met in the city as well: it was perhaps bad then, but it is worse now.
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Notes
P. Perry (2005) ‘Corruption in Burma and the Corruption of Burma’, in N. Tarling (ed.) Corruption and Good Governance in Asia (London: Routledge) pp. 186–97.
See the discussion of ‘tea money’ and officials’ uses of the black market in A. M. Thawnghmung (2011) ‘The Politics of Everyday Life in Twenty-First Century Myanmar’, Journal of Asian Studies, 70, 3, 641–56. For a discussion of the more negative aspects of low-level corruption, see Monique Skidmore’s mentions of ‘line-money’ in M. Skidmore (2004) Karaoke Fascism: Burma and Politics of Fear (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press).
This is most apparent in M. Aung-Thwin (2001) ‘Parochial Universalism, Democracy Jihad and the Orientalist Image of Burma: The New Evangelism’, Pacific Affairs, 74, 4, 483–505.
This is pointed out in the conclusion of M. Aung-Thwin (2011) The Return of the Galon King: History, Law, and Rebellion in Colonial Burma (Athens: Ohio University Press), albeit in a somewhat a-historical fashion.
For a more nuanced discussion of the impact of colonialism, see C. Ikeya (2011) Reconfiguring Women, Colonialism, and Modernity in Burma (Honolulu: Hawai’i University Press) pp. 14–45.
I am borrowing this phrase from N. Tarling (2001) Imperialism in Southeast Asia: A Fleeting Passing Phase (Abingdon: Routledge).
J. Smail (1961) ‘On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, 2, 2, 72–102.
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M. Aung-Thwin (1985) ‘The British “Pacification” of Burma: Order without Meaning’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 16, 2, 245–61.
T. Myint-U (2001) The Making of Modern Burma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
M.-L. Heikkilä-Horn (2009) ‘Imagining “Burma”: A Historical Overview’, Asian Ethnicity, 10, 2, 145–54.
M. P. Callahan (2003) Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).
Partha Chatterjee (1986) Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (London: Zed Books).
See, for example, Ananda Rajah (2002) ‘A “Nation of Intent” in Burma: Karen Ethno-Nationalism, Nationalism and Narrations of Nation’, The Pacific Review, 15, 4, 517–37.
M. P. Callahan (2002) ‘State Formation in the Shadow of the Raj: Violence, Warfare and Politics in Colonial Burma’, Southeast Asian Studies, 39, 4, 513–36; Parimal Ghosh (2000) Brave Men of the Hills: Resistance and Rebellion in Burma, 1825–1932 (London: Hurst and Company); M. Aung-Thwin, The Return of the Galon King. The pre-1885 period of colonial rule has recently been re-evaluated in N. A. Englehart (2011) ‘Liberal Leviathan or Imperial Outpost? J. S. Furnivall on Colonial Rule in Burma’, Modern Asian Studies, 45, 4, 759–50.
M. Foucault (1991) ‘Governmentality’, in G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller (eds) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
P. Abrams (1988) ‘Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 1, 1, 58–89; T. Mitchell (1991) ‘The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics’, The American Political Science Review, 85, 1, 77–96; J. L. Comaroff (1998) ‘Reflections on the Colonial State, in South Africa and Elsewhere: Factions, Fragments, Facts and Fictions’, Social Identities, 4, 3, 321–61.
I am borrowing this phrase from A. H. M. Kirk-Greene (1980) ‘The Thin White Line: The Size of the British Colonial Service in Africa’, African Affairs, 79, 314, 25–44.
M. Adas (1981) ‘From Avoidance to Confrontation: Peasant Protest in Precolonial and Colonial Southeast Asia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 23, 2, 217–47; V. Lieberman (1984) Burmese Administrative Cycles: Anarchy and Conquest, C. 1580–1760 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press); T. Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma; M. J. Braddick (2000) State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
J. Saha (2012) ‘A Mockery of Justice? Colonial Law, the Everyday State and Village Politics in the Burma Delta c.1900’, Past & Present, 217, pp. 187–212.
For how some practices deemed corrupt were sanitised and made routine in Britain between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, see P. Harling (1995), ‘Rethinking “Old Corruption”’, Past & Present, 147, 127–58; N. Dirks (2006) The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press); M. Pugh (1993) The Making of Modern British Politics, 1867–1939 (Oxford: Blackwell) pp. 10–15.
M. Nuitjen and G. Anders (eds) (2007) ‘Corruption and the Secret of Law: An Introduction’, in Corruption and the Secret of Law: A Legal Anthropological Perspective (Aldershot: Ashgate) pp. 9–12.
R. H. Taylor (1987) The State in Burma (London: C. Hurst & Co).
R. H. Taylor (1976) ‘Politics in Late Colonial Burma: The Case of U Saw’, Modern Asian Studies, 10, 2, 161–93.
M. W. Charney (2009) A History of Modern Burma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
For the complexity of this relationship, see P. Meehan (2011) ‘Drugs, Insurgency and State-Building in Burma: Why the Drugs Trade Is Central to Burma’s Changing Political Order’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 42, 3, 376–404.
J. Comaroff and J. L. Comaroff (eds.) (2006) Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press); A. Mbembe (2001) On the Postcolony (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press).
J. Cloke and Ed Brown (2004) ‘Neoliberal Reform, Governance and Corruption in the South: Assessing the International Anti-Corruption Crusade’, Antipode, 36, 2, 272–94; W. Brown (2003) ‘Neo-liberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy’, Theory & Event, 7, 1.
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Saha, J. (2013). Conclusion. In: Law, Disorder and the Colonial State. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137306999_6
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