Burma in the post-colonial world economy in the 1950S.

Abstract

This research project aims to look into the political and economic questions that newly independent Burma faced in the 1950s. The impact of the various insurrections and the later KMT intrusion had a devastating impact on Burma’s foreign relations and trade. The decline and gradual deterioration of Burma’s rice industry started in these years. This paper is a part of the larger project and starts with a review of the British colonial legacy in Burma. The colonial period had arbitrarily divided Burma into different political and economic zones, which needed to be united in order to create an economically and politically viable state. The economy remained to be dominated by the foreigners – particularly the British. The new leaders of independent Burma were deeply factionalised in competing elite groups and totally incapable in presenting a coherent strategy to tackle the multifaceted problems many of the newly independent countries in Southeast Asia faced in the Cold War period. The later parts of the project will deal with the KMT intrusion, rice politics, foreign trade, foreign policy and ideological discourses in the late 1940s and 1950s in Burma.