a. The Japanese? The French?

b. Euwen Bagshawe’s translation and Kin Wun Mingyi diaries.
Translations of important Burmese works have a lasting value, that this year’s stylised theoretical observations will soon lose.

d. Don’t agree with this statement at all:

“Not surprisingly, the largest proportion of scholarly books and articles on Burma that have appeared since 1945 can be broadly classed as history.”

[Most are political science (Silverstein, Callahan, Taylor, Steinberg), often history by political scientists. There were some historians who started in the colonial era who continued working into the post-colonial era like Luce and Than Tun, for instance. In recent history, there have been very few mentors in the area of history to study under.]

c. Regarding this statement:

“In recent years, there has been a number of important works in English produced by Western-trained Burmese scholars, looking at their country’s history from an indigenous perspective.” (footnote citing Aung-Thwin’s “Mists of Ramanya”)

He really should have listed Thant Myint-U’s latest book, because that is the default history of Burma that people are buying in the bookstore and reading nowadays according to bookstore owner friends of mine.

As for Aung-Thwin’s “Mists of Ramanya” attempt to erase Mon history without knowing any Mon language at all, or deeply reading reading any Mon inscriptions or chronicles, and by essentially blaming Mon history on some colonial era historians tried to mess with the prior ethnic Burmese state, there was a whole international Mon history conference last month that dealt with this topic, only partly because there are mor important issues like starting to read and study Mon chronicles themselves, and a whole string of negative book reviews of his book (Pierre Pichard included).

IMHO what Burmese history really needs is a smart non-elite rural scholar. Enlightened western educational institutions don’t seem to be able to provide such an opportunity. It’s not difficult. I did it by myself by hiring a research assistant who was waiting for university to reopen. More imagination please.

a. Good that Selth acknowledges three referreed journals, because the Journal of Burma Studies has been passing itself off as the only one around: “Journal of Burma Studies: The world’s only peer-reviewed printed research journal on Burma published outside of Burma/ Myanmar….” (From their website) I can vouchsafe that the SOAS journal is also refereed since I’ve published four articles in it.

http://thejotazine.blogspot.com/2007/11/dance-of-burmese-sasquatch.html