Book Number: 4 490

Lieberman, Victor B.

BURMESE ADMINISTRATIVE CYCLES: ANARCHY AND CONQUEST, C. 1580-1760

This book is the first detailed study of administration and politics in premodern Burma and one of the few works of its kind for mainland Southeast Asia. Between c. 1580 and 1760 Burma experienced a pronounced cyclic trend, in which phases of effective leadership and military conquest alternated with periods of anarchy and imperial collapse. Using a variety of hitherto ignored primary sources, Victor Lieberman argues that these oscillations derived in part from weaknesses in the system of popular control and in the structure of elite-throne relations. Overlying this cyclic trend, however, was a long-term tendency toward centralization. The latter movement drew strength from conscious institutional experimentation, demographic shifts, the introduction of firearms, and the growth of maritime commerce. Thus the state became more stable and effective, while the relation between throne and elites changed in successive cycles. The author concludes by setting Burmese patterns c. 1580-1760 in a broader historic and regional framework (Princeton 1984)

356 pp., 160 x 240 mm

39.- US-Dollar

Burma:

• VISIONS OF SHWEDAGON

• PAGAN, THE ORIGINS OF MODERN BURMA

• IRRIGATION IN THE HEARTLAND OF BURMA: FOUNDATIONS OF THE PRE-COLONIAL BURMESE STATE

• GOLDEN TRIANGLE FRONTIER AND WILDERNESS

• FURTHER INDIA

• GAZETTEER OF BURMA, VOL. I & II

• THE KACHIN, RELIGION AND CUSTOMS

• A THOUSAND MILES ON AN ELEPHANT IN THE SHAN STATES

• ANCIENT BUDDHIST ART FROM BURMA

• FOLK ELEMENTS IN BURMESE BUDDHISM

• BURMESE BUDDHIST SCULPTURE - The Johan Möger Collection

• KING THEBAW AND THE ECOLOGICAL RAPE OF BURMA: The Political and Commercial Struggle Between British India and French Indo-China in Burma 1878-1886

• A THOUSAND LIVES AWAY: BUDDHISM IN CONTEMPORARY BURMA

• WHO KILLED AUNG SAN?

• BURMA IN REVOLT

• AUNG SAN SUU KYI AND BURMA'S UNFINISHED RENAISSANCE

• FROM SANGHA TO LAITY

• FORGOTTEN LAND: A REDISCOVERY OF BURMA

• MANDALAY AND OTHER CITIES OF THE PAST IN BURMA

• THE PENTAGONAL MONUMENTS OF PAGAN

• SANSKRIT BUDDHISM IN BURMA

• THE INTIATION OF NOVICEHOOD AND THE ORDINATION OF MONKHOOD IN THE BURMESE BUDDHIST CULTURE

• BURMA: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity

• RETURN VIA RANGOON: A young Chindit survives the jungle and Japanese captivity

• BURMA NATIONALISM AND IDEOLOGY - ANALYSIS OF SOCIETY CULTURE AND POLITICS

• THE STATE OF BURMA

• BURMESE TIMBER ELEPHANT

• A JOURNALIST, A GENERAL AND AN ARMY IN BURMA

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