Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know Read Online Free PDF Page B

until overcome by the Burmans in 1785. Burman hegemony extended over various tribal areas and smaller local states in the Shan region. Significantly, to enhance the past and thereby accrue legitimacy to the present, the regime has rebuilt the royal palaces in Mandalay, Pegu, and Shwebo, compromising authentic architectural styles for contemporary visual and metaphorical effects.
    Conquest was not simply for booty. It was inherent in the concept of the world-conqueror Buddhist king (
cakkravatti
), sometimes considered an embryonic Buddha, who invaded not for land but to validate his universalistic religious status. Southeast Asia, however, was land-rich but population-poor. Monarchs forcibly relocated people, and slaves taken in conquest were needed to increase agricultural production, and thus state revenues, and to build and maintain the pagodas necessary for legitimacy. Regimes transported back to the Burman capital Buddhist symbols, from statues to whiteelephants to scriptures, providing physical evidence of the monarch’s prowess and religiosity.
    Wars and conquests were endemic. The modern concept of national boundaries that extend to a designated line did not exist before the Western conquests of the region; thus, control was contested. Rather, a
mandala
system of sovereignty was the norm, in which power radiated from the Burmese king, and indeed from the throne itself, in a series of concentric circles to almost indefinite distant regions. In those areas, local rulers might owe allegiance and pay tribute to the Burmese king and also to one or several nearby more powerful kingdoms and even to the Chinese emperor in Beijing. This was not considered illogical or inappropriate, but it did foster disputes.
    The capital was the center of not only the state but the world, and the legitimacy of the king depended on his being in harmony with the cosmic order. This concept may sound anachronistic, but the attitude that control of the capital itself is crucial and that the capital is the symbolic center—Burmese dynasties often moved their capitals for both political and astrological reasons—may have played some role in the military movement to Naypyidaw in 2005 (see chapter 6 ).

How did Burmese kings view governance and authority, and is this relevant today?
     
    Even though the titles and technology changes may mask past practices, many traditional attitudes and predilections continue today, modified only in part. Under the veneer of modernity, there are remnants, as in most societies, of primordial or deeply embedded concepts and attitudes that still affect both the rulers and the expectations of many of those ruled.
    Some scholars have cogently argued that since 1962 the military has in fact acted very much on the model of the Burmese kings. In many traditional societies, including Burma, power was conceived as finite. This is in contrast to modern administrative theory, in which power is viewed as essentially infinite,so that it can be shared or delegated to the potential advantage of all involved. This has not been the case in Burma/Myanmar, for to share power (from center to periphery, between leaders, etc.) results in automatic loss—a zero-sum game. In these circumstances, power becomes highly personalized. Loyalty thus becomes the prime necessity, resulting in entourages and a series of patron–client relationships. Those outside of this core group may therefore be considered potential adversaries—a “loyal opposition” thus becomes an oxymoron. The potential for diminution of one’s power (
ana
, in Burmese) by sharing it results in information that is carefully guarded (in the modern era, censorship has been the result). Even sharing plans might diminish authority, as could a fixed system of succession, which did not develop. These tendencies continue in the modern era.
    Administration was personally (not institutionally) determined. A trained, tested, and permanent bureaucracy never developed, as in China