myanmar history

U K Ba Thaung (1931-2022) - interesting stories of his relationship with General Ne Win, including observations regarding the death of General Aung San and the involvement U Saw and more personal first hand observations of General Ne Win's many unusual superstitions and remedies such as bathing in buffalo blood and his methods to increase his virility.  

I was fortunate to interview Kenneth twice before he passed away on 22 May, 2022 at the age of 91.  We must ensure the life stories of elderly Myanma are recorded in some way or they will be lost forever when they pass away.  

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

General Ne Win (1910 -2002) was a Burmese politician and military commander who served as Prime Minister of Burma from 1958 to 1960 and 1962 to 1974, and also as President of Burma from 1962 to 1981.  He was the country's military dictator during the Socialist period from 1962 to 1988.

I wonder how many of those listening to this podcast know that the name "Ne Win" was a nom de guerre used by Ne Win during WW2 to protect his identity.  His birth name was Shu Maung.

In this episode I have only dealt with his early life up to the start of WW2 in Burma.  I will shortly re-publish two interviews with my friend, U Kenneth Ba Thaung  who sadly passed away last year at the age of 91.  Kenneth had a close involvement with General Ne Win and provides some fascinating insights into Ne Win's personality.

I am again indebted to the leading Asian scholar, Professor Robert Taylor for giving me permission to read some extracts from his biography on the life of General Ne Win entitled General Ne Win: A political biography  published in 2015 by the Institute of South East Asian Studies and which can be purchased as an ebook or as a soft cover book - https://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg/publication/2076

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

Dr. Maung Maung was not only a giant in terms of his legal scholarship - being awarded two doctorates from prestigious international universities - but was also a thorough gentleman and patriot in the important years of Burma's pre and post independence.  He was heavily criticized by some for being too close to General Ne Win, but others saw him as a loyal servant of the State and who tried to be a positive influence on General Ne Win. Towards the end of his life he spent time at Singapore's Institute of South East Asian Studies (ISEAS) providing an oral history of his life and views.   I am indebted to the leading Asian scholar, Professor Robert Taylor for giving me permission to read some extracts from his biography of him -  Dr. Maung Maung : Gentleman, Scholar and Patriot  published in 2008 by ISEAS and which can be purchased from ISEAS in an ebook or printed format - https://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg/publication/909.

Dr. Maung Maung has the distinction of, not just being appointed the 7th President of Myanmar, but also the President with the shortest term.  He was appointed on 18 August, 1988 but was removed one month later by a military coup on 19 September, 1988.  Myanmar was then without a President until 2011 when U Thein Sein was appointed.

Please note an error I made in referring to U Thant as the first Secretary General of the UN; he was in fact the fourth holding the role from 1961 to 1971.

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

Charles Haswell Campagnac (1886 to 1970) wrote much of his autobiography before he died and we have his grand daughter, Sandra and other members of his family to thank for pulling all of his notes together and producing The Autobiography of a Wanderer in England and Burma published in 2011 and available at Amazon and other ebook stores.

Charles Campagnac's role as a barrister, a Councillor of Rangoon's Municipal Council (including time as Mayor) and as a Member of the Legislative Council provides us with a detailed understanding of life in Burma including the years before, during and after WW2.

This episode 8 deals with Charles Campagnac's views on the plight of the Anglo Burman community post WW2.

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

Charles Haswell Campagnac (1886 to 1970) wrote much of his autobiography before he died and we have his grand daughter, Sandra and other members of his family to thank for pulling all of his notes together and producing The Autobiography of a Wanderer in England and Burma published in 2011 and available at Amazon and other ebook stores.

Charles Campagnac's role as a barrister, a Councillor of Rangoon's Municipal Council (including time as Mayor) and as a Member of the Legislative Council provides us with a detailed understanding of life in Burma including the years before, during and after WW2.

This episode 7 deals with Charles Campagnac's experiences on the reoccupation of Burma after the war.

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

Charles Haswell Campagnac (1886 to 1970) wrote much of his autobiography before he died and we have his grand daughter, Sandra and other members of his family to thank for pulling all of his notes together and producing The Autobiography of a Wanderer in England and Burma published in 2011 and available at Amazon and other ebook stores.

Charles Campagnac's role as a barrister, a Councillor of Rangoon's Municipal Council (including time as Mayor) and as a Member of the Legislative Council provides us with a detailed understanding of life in Burma including the years before, during and after WW2.

This episode 6 deals with the Campagnac's experiences in India having fled from the Japanese occupation of Burma.

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

Guy Slater was born in Lahore (then India) in 1941, the eldest son an Englishman who worked for the Indian Civil Service (as did several earlier generations of the family).  Following India becoming independent in 1947 his father became a diplomat and was posted at one time to Burma.  On leaving school Guy spent 8 months in Rangoon between school and university with his parents during which time EM Law-Yone, the legendary founder of the Rangoon Nation ( https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/apr/03/wendy-law-yone-burma-rangoon-nation) offered him a job as a "cub reporter".
During his time at the Rangoon Nation he became a close friend of Marike Barrington, the daughter of Mr. James Barrington who was head of Burma's Foreign Office and had previously served as Ambassador to both the US and the UN and was succeeded at the UN by the famous figure of U Thant.
The podcast covers Guy's short time as a "cub reporter" in Yangon and his career back in England in the theatre and TV and his continued involvement with Myanmar through his role as a Trustee of Prospect Burma (https://prospectburma.org/).

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

Charles Haswell Campagnac (1886 to 1970) wrote much of his autobiography before he died and we have his grand daughter, Sandra and other members of his family to thank for pulling all of his notes together and producing The Autobiography of a Wanderer in England and Burma published in 2011 and available at Amazon and other ebook stores.

Charles Campagnac's role as a barrister, a Councillor of Rangoon's Municipal Council (including time as Mayor) and as a Member of the Legislative Council provides us with a detailed understanding of life in Burma including the years before, during and after WW2.

This episode 5 deals with the horrors of war which befell Burma during WW2.

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

Charles Haswell Campagnac (1886 to 1970) wrote much of his autobiography before he died and we have his grand daughter, Sandra and other members of his family to thank for pulling all of his notes together and producing The Autobiography of a Wanderer in England and Burma published in 2011 and available at Amazon and other ebook stores.

Charles Campagnac's role as a barrister, a Councillor of Rangoon's Municipal Council (including time as Mayor) and as a Member of the Legislative Council provides us with a detailed understanding of life in Burma including the years before, during and after WW2.

This episode 4 of his life story deals with his views on the use of the death penalty in Burma in the 1920s, the difference between Anglo Burmans and Anglo Indians and his election to Rangoon Municipal Council

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

Charles Haswell Campagnac (1886 to 1970) wrote much of his autobiography before he died and we have his grand daughter, Sandra and other members of his family to thank for pulling all of his notes together and producing The Autobiography of a Wanderer in England and Burma published in 2011 and available at Amazon and other ebook stores.

Charles Campagnac's role as a barrister, a Councillor of Rangoon's Municipal Council (including time as Mayor) and as a Member of the Legislative Council provides us with a detailed understanding of life in Burma including the years before, during and after WW2.

This episode 3 of his life story deals with some of the colourful characters he met outside his practice as a barrister.

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

Charles Haswell Campagnac (1886 to 1970) wrote much of his autobiography before he died and we have his grand daughter, Sandra and other members of his family to thank for pulling all of his notes together and producing The Autobiography of a Wanderer in England and Burma published in 2011 and available at Amazon and other ebook stores.

Charles Campagnac's role as a barrister, a Councillor of Rangoon's Municipal Council (including time as Mayor) and as a Member of the Legislative Council provides us with a detailed understanding of life in Burma including the years before, during and after WW2.

This episode 2 of his life story covers his involvement as a barrister in the famous case of the newspaper publisher of The Rangoon Times, Mr. Channing Arnold who was prosecuted in 1913 for defamation of two British civil servants.

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

Charles Haswell Campagnac (1886 to 1970) wrote much of his autobiography before he died and we have his grand daughter, Sandra and other members of his family to thank for pulling all of his notes together and producing The Autobiography of a Wanderer in England and Burma published in 2011 and available at Amazon and other ebook stores.

Charles Campagnac's role as a barrister, a Councillor of Rangoon's Municipal Council (including time as Mayor) and as a Member of the Legislative Council provides us with a detailed understanding of life in Burma including the years before, during and after WW2.

This episode deals with some of the stories from his early years as a barrister commencing on his return to Rangoon in 1909 at the age of 23.

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

Sithu (a very prestigious award for bravery and gallantry) Colonel Raymond Campagnac was born in August 1921 and passed away in November, 1989.  He was Anglo Burmese as were both his parents.
His daughter Sandra Campagnac - Carney has written a biography of his life entitled Burma's Son (published in 2020 by Blue Mist Publication and available in several ebook shops).  I was made aware of his remarkable life by another of my podcast subjects, Sithu Captain Kyaw Thein Lwin - see Episodes 31 to 34.  He believes the enormous contribution of the Anglo Burmese to Burma in general and specifically to the success of the Allied Forces in Burma during WW2 and in fighting for Burma's independence have largely been overlooked or forgotten.  Sandra's biography of her father goes some way in remedying that.

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

With significant assistance from Professor John Ingleson and Dr Ian Black (then both at the University of New South Wales) I published the first edition of A Short History of South East Asia in the late 1990s.   The current 6th edition was published in 2017 by Wiley and, if you are interested, is available for purchase on all the major ebook sites.

The catalyst for writing the book was a 1980 speech by the late Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore to the People's Action Party (the political party he founded) and in which he said "to understand the present and anticipate the future, one must know enough of the past, enough to have a sense of the history of a people".  In my opinion these few words are profound and apply to every country in the world, including Myanmar.

I propose to read the Myanmar chapter from the book over a few podcasts and hope by the end we will know enough of Myanmar's history to "understand the present and anticipate the future"?

This reading covers the period from the 1970s to the early 2000s.

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

With significant assistance from Professor John Ingleson and Dr Ian Black (then both at the University of New South Wales) I published the first edition of A Short History of South East Asia in the late 1990s.   The current 6th edition was published in 2017 by Wiley and, if you are interested, is available for purchase on all the major ebook sites.

The catalyst for writing the book was a 1980 speech by the late Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore to the People's Action Party (the political party he founded) and in which he said "to understand the present and anticipate the future, one must know enough of the past, enough to have a sense of the history of a people".  In my opinion these few words are profound and apply to every country in the world, including Myanmar.

I propose to read the Myanmar chapter from the book over a few podcasts and hope by the end we will know enough of Myanmar's history to "understand the present and anticipate the future"?

This reading covers the period of Japanese occupation during WW2 and the early years of independence to the late 1960s.

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

With significant assistance from Professor John Ingleson and Dr Ian Black (then both at the University of New South Wales) I published the first edition of A Short History of South East Asia in the late 1990s.   The current 6th edition was published in 2017 by Wiley and, if you are interested, is available for purchase on all the major ebook sites.

The catalyst for writing the book was a 1980 speech by the late Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore to the People's Action Party (the political party he founded) and in which he said "to understand the present and anticipate the future, one must know enough of the past, enough to have a sense of the history of a people".  In my opinion these few words are profound and apply to every country in the world, including Myanmar.

I propose to read the Myanmar chapter from the book over a few podcasts and hope by the end we will know enough of Myanmar's history to "understand the present and anticipate the future"?

This reading covers the period of English colonisation up to WW2.

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

With significant assistance from Professor John Ingleson and Dr Ian Black (then both at the University of New South Wales) I published the first edition of A Short History of South East Asia in the late 1990s.   The current 6th edition was published in 2017 by Wiley and, if you are interested, is available for purchase on all the major ebook sites.

The catalyst for writing the book was a 1980 speech by the late Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore to the People's Action Party (the political party he founded) and in which he said "to understand the present and anticipate the future, one must know enough of the past, enough to have a sense of the history of a people".  In my opinion these few words are profound and apply to every country in the world, including Myanmar.

I propose to read the Myanmar chapter from the book over a few podcasts and hope by the end we will know enough of Myanmar's history to "understand the present and anticipate the future"?

This reading covers the period from the area's early history up to English colonisation.

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

Maurice Collis was born in Dublin in 1889, the son of an Irish solicitor, and went to Rugby in 1903 and then in 1907 to Oxford.  He was posted to Burma  in 1912. He had postings at Sagaing  and elsewhere in Burma. In 1917, the British army raised a Burmese brigade with which Collis went to Palestine. In 1919, he went on leave and travelled in Europe. In the 1920s he was district commissioner in Arakan State.  In 1929–1930, a period when relations between Burmese, Indians and British became particularly difficult, he was district magistrate in Rangoon and much of the book deals with that period  and three particular cases;  the political trial of J.M Sen Gupta, the mayor Calcutta and two criminal trials.   My particular interest however is in the sections dealing with the Peasants' Rebellion in 1930 and Collis' deep understanding of the Burmese and the failings on the British Government.  He left Burma in 1931 and wrote a number of books on the country and died in 1973.

The book can be purchased as an ebook from Amazon - https://www.amazon.com.au/Trials-Burma-Maurice-Collis-ebook/dp/B00Z4M9N3E - and possibly other ebook sellers.

The photo of Collis is from the National Portrait Gallery, London

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

Sao Noan Oo was born in 1931 in Shan State as a princess, being the daughter of the Sawbwa or Sao Hpa of Lawksawk, a state in the Federated Shan States or Mong Tai.

Sao Noan Oo was studying in England at the time of the 1962 coup and her scholarship was cancelled.   Given what happened to her family and other Shan families after that coup she has never returned to Myanmar but has tirelessly fought for the rights of the Shan people.  She married an Englishman and is now known by most people as Nel Adams.

Nel has written her life story entitled "My Vanished World".  The book is currently out of print but some second hand copies can be found in ebook sites like Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/My-Vanished-World-Story-Princess/dp/189931024X

She has also written a history of the Tai (or Shan) people which is available at Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Unravelling-History-Tai-Yai-Noan/dp/1527209474.

This chapter deals with the disastrous long term consequences for the Shan people following what has become known as  Martyrs Day when,  on 19 July 1947,  a number leading Burmese and ethnic leaders in pre independent Burma were assassinated.  This included U Aung San (the father of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi) and a Shan leader, Sao Sam Htun, the Sawbwa of Mongpawn.

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church

U Win Htein is an elder politician of the National League for Democracy, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's right hand man, a former parliamentarian, army captain and businessman.

U Win Htein has spent 20 years of his life in prison for his belief in democracy.

He has written his autobiography entitled "Win Htein's story for posterity: Burma's odyssey from tyranny to quasi-democracy" which can be purchased as a ebook from many online booksellers such as https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/win-hteins-story-for-posterity-win-htein/1140822639.

It is extremely hard to believe that at the age of 79 for speaking out against the coup of 1 February, 2021 U Win Htein was sentenced in late October 2021 for sedition and received a 20 year prison sentence.  He is currently serving this sentence at a jail in Mandalay.

This Episode deals with Martyrs' Day which occurred 75 years ago today on 19 July 1947 when assassins entered a room in the Secretariat where the Governor's Executive Council was meeting and shot dead 9 prominent men, including U Aung San and a number of ethnic leaders, who would all have played a prominent role in an independent Burma.  The modern history of Burma might well have been a very different if these assassinations had not taken place.   19 July has been called "Martyrs' Day" ever since.

Please feel free to contact me with suggested interviewees at church.peter@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening .

Peter Church