The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXXII, Part 1-2, 1984 - Khamkoo

256 Kennon Breazeale
Considerable discussion is devoted to the contrasts between the coastal region
(the Mon stronghold into which there was much Burman migration) and the drier
Burman interior. This lends weight to two important interpretations that disprove
earlier, sparsely documented conclusions on the period.
First, the old argument that.
Burma was isolationist and static after the sixteenth century, unaffected by and
disinterested in external trade, is shown to be fallacious. He concludes that 'Without
the sustained contribution of maritime trade and imported silver to commercial integration,
and without Ava's continued control over the firearms, revenues, and luxury
imports of the coast, it is most unlikely that the Restored Empire could have been
maintained. Herein lay the chief significance of the early seventeenth-century provincial
reforms : they allowed Toungoo kings to reside in the main agricultural districts
without endangering reliable access to the coast.' Second, the author stresses that one
must beware of interpretations based on ethnic divisions. Mons from the interior, for
example, fought alongside the Burmans during the struggle of 1754-1757 against the
Mon kingdom at Pegu. Alaung-hpaya readily accepted their submission and did not,
as some have argued, try to extinguish their leadership and culture. Far from trying
to Burmanise the Mons, Shans, Chins, Europeans or others, Alaung-hpaya enjoyed the
glittering cultural diversity that these people represented when paying homage at his
court, re_garding them as proof of his pretensions as a universal sovereign.
Besides enriching our knowledge of a neglected period of Burmese history, this
type of study is essential to analogies with other parts of South-East Asia and with
cyclical tendencies in China and India. The author suggests several parallels, such as
the collapse of Ayutthaya and the Le dynasty. In the absence of published background
research, his methodology and analogies cannot yet be extended to the truly obscure
interior, where the rises and falls of tiny princely states were subject in rapid succession
to the forces that he discusses. In this connexion, it is unfortunate that Burmese,
Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese sources provide only dim glimpses of them.
The author has made admirable use of contemporary Burmese documents,
showing them to be far richer for these centuries than those in Khmer, Malay or Thai.
To complement the thorough bibliography, an appendix assesses the contemporary
Burmese sources, especially edicts and chronicles- a valuable addendum for historiographers
and future researchers.
Ken/lOll B1·eazeale
East-West Center,
Honolulu