BURMA ALONE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 949, 18 October 1957, Page 14

BURMA ALONE

THE UNION OF BURMA, a Study of the First Years of Independence, by Hugh Tinker; Oxford University Press, for the Royal Institute ‘of International Affairs, English price 42/-. \V HEN in 1949 the United States voted Burma the country of the post-war class least likely to succeed,

the prediction, though born of Farther Eastern preoccupations, looked unhappily close to fulfilment. The authority of the Government ended in the outlying suburbs of Rangoon. The Communist insurrection had grown into a nation-wide civil war in which some half-dozen minority groups strove for their own ends. Social and economic disintegration appeared to be well advanced. Small wonder, perhaps, that President Truman’s roving ambassador reported that Burma was "well-nigh hopeless." Uncle Sam saved his breath to cool Chiang Kai Shek’s porridge, and the slow return to some semblance of civil order was accompanied by the Kuomintang invasion of 1953, and the severe economic crisis brought about by the collapse of the rice market during 1955. Out of these disorders the Burmese have emerged with forward-looking social and economic welfare policies, a political framework of democratic socialism which compares favourably

with that of many other former colonies, and a shrewd and courageous foreign policy. Hugh Tinker’s excellent and detailed study, which gives the first comprehensive account of this important period in Burma’s development, is thus unusually valuable. The book is scholarly as well as readable: Professor Tinker is an historian, and brings to his researches the historian’s respect for sources and verification. Most of the material has not previously appeared in print, and has not been available to the public, even in Burma. There is no attempt to gloss over the many and serious mistakes which have been made in the Union since 1948. nor is it pretended that there is not a great deal still to be accomplished before anything like stability is achieved. But the final impression given by this book is encouraging to anyone who has the interests of Burma, or postcolonial territories in general, at heart.

William R.

Roff