The Burmese Polity, 1752-1819: Politics, Administration, and Social Organization in the Early Kon-baung Period.

• Author: Aung-Thwin, Michael

When the British annexed Burma in 1885-86, it eliminated the last, Konbaung, dynasty of Burma. This book is a study of the early part of that dynasty, focusing on the first six reigns (out of eleven), beginning with Alaungpaya's in 1752 and ending with King Bodawpaya's death in 1819. It has seven chapters, a conclusion, three appendices, a short glossary, notes, bibliography, and index. There are also several illustrations which are mainly statistical tables, a map, and a list of (pertinent) kings.

The first chapter describes the early Konbaung polity and its antecedents. Chapter 2 deals with early Konbaung society, followed by kingship and political thought in chapter 3. Administrative structure and its process occupies chapter 4, while chapter 5 discusses officials of the state. Chapter 6 analyzes royal succession, and chapter 7, the passage of power. A short conclusion ends the main body of text, followed by some of the technical components noted above.

Other than the two dissertations on the same dynasty submitted by Myo Myint and Toe Hla to Cornell and Northern Illinois University, respectively, there have been approximately only two others that have been written in English in the past thirty years focused on the early part of this dynasty. In that sense, publishing Koenig's dissertation is useful to the field. However, as a book its contribution is marginal, and illustrates well, why, as a general rule, dissertations should not be published without revision. Indeed, most of its problems stem from that fact.

First, the book is outdated, both in terms of historical data and bibliographic information, therefore largely ineffectual. Second, its studied indifference to a whole decade of research on Burmese history insults the professionals in the field, sullying its intellectual camaraderie. Third, its artificial acknowledgement and casual assessment of Burmese sources, and its self-serving definition of Burmese terms make the work unreliable. Finally, its dependence on another work published earlier is simply too obvious to be ignored, raising questions of redundancy.

Publishing his dissertation, virtually without revision twelve years after it was submitted, the author clearly has not conducted even a cursory survey of the pertinent literature in what is really a very small field. He failed to consult critical primary works in the period under study, as well as theoretical works that are important to conceptual and methodological issues in Burma studies that he himself raised. Most of these were available before, during, and after the writing of his dissertation, and certainly before the publication of this book.

With five exceptions, nothing specifically published on Burma or Burmese history after 1978 was used or listed. Of these, one was the author's own, while one was already familiar to him in its unpublished form (Victor Lieberman's Burmese Administrative Cycles: Anarchy and Conquest, c. 1580-1760). The other three were articles published in 1979 and 1980, very shortly after his dissertation was completed. None of the three was used with any real understanding of, or appreciation for, its content or significance...