New Books on Myanmar

The Wa of Myanmar and China’s Quest for Global Dominance

Bertil Lintner University of Washington Press, 2021

The United Wa State Army (UWSA) is a non state armed group that administers an autonomous zone in the difficult-toreach Wa Hills of eastern Myanmar. As China expands its geopolitical interests across Asia through the Belt and Road Initiative, the Wa have come to play a pivotal role in Beijing’s efforts to extend its influence in Myanmar. In a book relevant to current debates about geopolitics in Asia, the illicit drug trade, Myanmar’s decades-long civil wars, and ongoing efforts to negotiate a settlement, Bertil Lintner, the only foreign journalist to visit the Wa areas when they were controlled by the Communist Party of Burma, traces the history of the Wa Hills and the struggles of its people, providing a rare look at the UWSA.

Mediums and Magical Things: Statues, Paintings and Masks in Asian Places

Laurel Kendall University of California Press, 2021

Statues, paintings, and masks—like the bodies of shamans and spirit mediums— give material form and presence to otherwise invisible entities, and sometimes these objects are understood to be enlivened, agentive on their own terms. This book explores how magical images are expected to work with the shamans and spirit mediums who tend and use them in contemporary South Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar, Bali, and elsewhere in Asia. It considers how such things are fabricated, marketed, cared for, disposed of, and sometimes transformed into art-market commodities and museum artifacts.

Sea Nomads of Southeast Asia: From the Past to the Present

Bérénice Bellina, Roger Blench, and Jean-Christophe Galipaud National University of Sigapore Press, 2021

For many years, the sea nomads were assumed to be without history, and even without archaeology. This has proven far from the case, and recent archaeological findings allow us to more closely describe sea nomadism from the Pleistocene through the early Holocene up to the present. Integrating these findings with the latest in historical research, linguistics, ethnography and historical genetics allows us to better understand sea-nomad ways of life over a scale of millennia and to appreciate the diversity and flexibility of this sea-nomad world. This in turn enriches our understanding of nomadism and mobility as a way of life, and the sea not only as a landscape of resources, but as a home and spiritual landscape as well.

Repossessing Shanland: Myanmar, Thailand and a NationState Deferred

Jane M. Ferguson University of Wisconsin Press, 2021

“An outstanding, unique contribution. Vividly recounts the lives of former Shan soldiers, who have managed to survive, preserve, and reconstruct their cultural identities within and along the perimeters set by two neighboring nation-states. Comparative, yet nuanced; informative, yet lively and fun—Repossessing Shanland will appeal to a wide range of audiences.”

Colonizing Animals: Interspecies Empire in Myanmar

Jonathan Saha Cambridge University Press, 2021

Animals were vital to the British colonization of Myanmar. In this path breaking history of British imperialism in Myanmar from the early nineteenth century to 1942, Jonathan Saha argues that animals were impacted and transformed by colonial subjugation. By examining the writings of Burmese nationalists and the experiences of subaltern groups, he also shows how animals were mobilized by Burmese anticolonial activists in opposition to imperial rule.