BurmaMyanmar A History

AY2015/2016 Semester 1

This three-hour seminar examines the development of cultures, peoples, polities, and societies which occupy the territory of what constitutes the modern nation-state of Myanmar. This course presents a diachronic account of the beginning of cultures in prehistoric Myanmar starting with what archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists identified as the prehistoric communities who established settlements in Iron Age sites such as those in Ywa Htin and Nyaunggan. These sites are significant because they formed the early connecting nodes of what might have been an extensive network of technology transfer along the north-south and east-west corridors linking China and India via mainland Southeast Asia. This course then examines key themes of each important historical periods to provide a continuous and coherent account of the geo-spatial entity, Burma/Myanmar up to the 21st century.