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