Writing a Singular Past: Mon History and “Modern” Historiography in Burma

@article{McCormick2014WritingAS,
  title={Writing a Singular Past: Mon History and “Modern” Historiography in Burma},
  author={Patrick McCormick},
  journal={Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia},
  year={2014},
  volume={29},
  pages={300 - 331},
  url={https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:145584300}
}
  • Patrick McCormick
  • Published 1 July 2014
  • History
  • Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia
The historiography of the Mons of Burma reflects the larger intellectual world in which Mon scholars have been schooled and trained. Under British colonialism, British scholars introduced a number of ideas and practices related to history. These included ways of viewing and evaluating sources and concepts of ethnicity. Local intellectuals, including Mon scholars, have made these colonial inheritances part of their own historiographical practices. A result is that Mon scholars often project… 
View via Publisher
8 Citations
Background Citations
1
Results Citations
1

8 Citations

Reassessing Reification: Ethnicity amidst “Failed” Governmentality in Burma and India

Abstract In part because a single colonial project eventually formally incorporated Burma as an appendage to British colonial rule of India, Burma scholars persistently draw on historiography and…

From voice to silence: the shrinking space for Uyghur narratives of belonging in reform China

ABSTRACT Based on a close reading of three narratives, the article explores subtle shifts in the textual strategies employed by Uyghur intellectuals in Xinjiang in conveying identity discourses in…

“Losing language is a loss of nation”: transnational movement to preserve Mon scripts in Thailand

ABSTRACT Nowadays, over one million Mon-speaking people live in Mon communities of southeastern Myanmar, and the Mon descendants live in Thailand and across various nations. This paper examines the…

Understanding the Changing Roles of Teachers in Transitional Myanmar

Positioning teachers in contemporary Myanmar, this chapter highlights the varying perceptions of teachers including a focus on teachers’ own perspectives of their roles and duties, giving emphasis to…

Sustainable Peacebuilding and Social Justice in Times of Transition : Findings on the Role of Education in Myanmar

This book offers a unique insight into the ways in which education systems, governance, and actors at multiple scales interact in initial steps towards building peace. It presents a spectrum of…

Sustainable Peacebuilding and Social Justice in Times of Transition: Findings on the Role of Education in Myanmar Chapter 10 – Prioritising Education: Youth Experiences within Formal and Non-formal Education Contexts

Education occupies a key position amongst the priorities of young people, especially where prior experiences in formal education settings have frequently been negative or exclusionary. This chapter…

Blending Mon and Thai cultural practices in Piphat Mon performance traditions of Central Thailand

Abstract Piphat is an ensemble in traditional Thai music, is perceived as central Thai music and represents court tradition based on idiophones and membranophones. Similarly, the Piphat Mon is Piphat…

Prioritising Education: Youth Experiences within Formal and Non-formal Education Contexts

Education occupies a key position amongst the priorities of young people, especially where prior experiences in formal education settings have frequently been negative or exclusionary. This chapter…

72 References

Myth and history in the historiography of early Burma : paradigms, primary sources, and prejudices

After careful re-reading and analysis of original Old Burmese and other primary sources, the author discovered that four out of the five events considered to be the most important in the history of…

Mranma Pran: When context encounters notion

Abstract The geo-political and cultural-historical context, more than any other single factor, has shaped the notion of Mranma Pran in pre-colonial times. It is derived from a longstanding reality…

Ethnic Politics in Eighteenth-Century Burma

We commonly find in the literature on pre-colonial mainland Southeast Asia a tendency to treat the principal ethnic groups—Burmese, Mons, Siamese, Cambodians, Vietnamese—as discrete political…

A Textbook Case of Nation-Building: The Evolution of History Curricula in Myanmar

Over the past sixty years, successive regimes in Myanmar have faced the challenge of building a nation-state amidst ethnic diversity and political contention.1 In addition to the material aspects of…

Remembering the Past in Early Modern England: Oral and Written Tradition

For students of the interaction between oral and written forms of communication the early modern period provides an important case study. England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was far…

History of Burma; Including Burma Proper, Pegu, Taungu, Tenasserim, and Arakan. from the Earliest Time to the End of the First War with British India

First published in 1883, this is a comprehensive history of Burma, drawing on both Burmese written records and the narratives of European travellers and residents prior to the end of the 19th…

Spreading the Dhamma: Writing, Orality, and Textual Transmission in Buddhist Northern Thailand

How did early Buddhists actually encounter the seminal texts of their religion? What were the attitudes held by monks and laypeople toward the written and oral Pali traditions? In this pioneering…

The art of not being governed : an anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia

From the acclaimed author and scholar James C. Scott, the compelling tale of Asian peoples who until recently have stemmed the vast tide of state-making to live at arm's length from any organized…

The Invention of Tradition

The article explores the issues of how law and space intersect in the area known as 'The South'. It examines the intersection between 'Northern' traditions of law and space and indigenous Australians…

The Indianized states of Southeast Asia

The author of this broad social and cultural history is Vice-Chancellor of the Jamia Millia Islamia and a leading exponent of the 'nationalist' view of the subject. Thus he finds 'the only unifying…
...