Aung San and the Struggle for Burmese Independence by Angelene Naw

Review by: Susanne Prager

The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 62, No. 2 (May, 2003), pp. 711-713
Published by: Association for Asian Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3096339 .
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 BOOK REVIEWS-SOUTHEAST ASIA 711

Why, then, did Johnson choose war at a time when important international-
and domestic-constituencies were strenuously opposing such a course of action?
Logevall suggests that one part of the answer lies in the pervasive fears of U.S.
policymakers that a diplomatic settlement would inevitably mean either the
neutralization of South Vietnam or National Liberation Front's participation in its
governing structure-either of which struck most top Johnson administration officials
as completely unacceptable. Any such diplomatic compromise, they believed, would
be universally viewed as a cold war defeat for the United States and would thus lead
to the diminution of U.S. credibility abroad and the president's credibility, stature,
and effectiveness at home. Another part of the answer, the author proposes, can be
found in the inability or unwillingness of those proponents of a diplomatic alternative
to work hard for one. Hence, Logevall blames both the Johnson administration itself
and the prodiplomacy forces for a failure of will. That failure, he concludes, resulted
in a war as devastating as it was avoidable.
Scholars of the Vietnam War will, of course, want to digest the fuller version of
these arguments in the author's ChoosingWar-along with the extensive documentary
evidence provided in that landmark monograph. Instructors looking for a book to
introduce students to the complexities of this conflict, however, and especially to U.S.
decision making, would be well advised to consider this succinct and cogent volume.
ROBERT J. MCMAHON
Universityof Florida

Aung San and the Strugglefor BurmeseIndependence.By ANGELENE NAW.

Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2001. xvi, 284 pp. $17.50 (paper).

It goes without saying that Aung San (1915-47) was the most important and
exceptional personality in twentieth-century Burma. The anticolonial struggle, the
negotiations for independence in London, and the consent of various ethnic groups to
a Union of Burma in the year 1947 are inextricably linked with his person. After his
assassination at the age of thirty-two, he became a highly venerated, almost mythical,
national hero in Burma. Thus-not by accident-in present-day Burma, the hope for
political changes is focused on none other than his daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi.
Given these facts, it is the more surprising that Aung San is still one of the least-
studied political figures in Southeast Asian political history. Apart from a short
biography written by his daughter, only a few biographical sketches or anecdotal
recollections by comrades and compilations of some of his speeches have been
published so far. Now, for the first time, a comprehensive biography on Aung San,
written by Angelene Naw, is available in the English language.
The book explores Aung San's eventful life within seven chapters. In the first and
second chapter, his early formative years are described, from his rather peaceful
childhood and youth in the upper Burma village of Natmauk to the period of his rise
in the nationalist movement as a student leader and as general secretaryof the radical
nationalist party, Dobama Asiayon. Thanks to Burmese-language sources and first-
hand information from close acquaintances, the author draws a vivid picture of Aung
San's striking personality during these years, such as his idiosyncratic and often
socially deviant behavior, his enormous inner discipline, and his single-mindedness.
The following two chapters deal with Aung San's approach to violent methods,
his cooperation with Japan during World War II, and his role in the resistance

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712 THE JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES

movement. The author aptly brings Aung San's ambivalent position to the fore: he
became a hero after founding the Burma Independence Army and expelling the British
from Burma at the side of the Japanese, but, as minister of defense during the Japanese
occupation period, he was part of the new "colonial"establishment. Nevertheless, after
leading the anti-Japanese resistance and getting into contact with the Allied Forces,
he emerged from the Japanese period as a hero. The book further explores the process
during which Aung San was protected by Mountbatten against a revanchist British
policy and thereby "able to start his negotiations [with the British] from a position
of power and prestige. . ." (pp.136-37).
The fifth chapter recalls the period when Aung San was able to gather all different
kinds of social and political interests and groups into one single nationalist
organization, the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL). As the unrivaled
nationalist leader, he successfully challenged the restorative colonial policy of the
British in an unprecedented political campaign which led to a replacement of the
governor and finally to the participation of the AFPFL in the executive council.
Aung San's final negotiations for the transfer of power in London are dealt with
in the sixth chapter. The author makes it clear that the closer that the date came for
the transfer of power and independence, the more difficult it was for Aung San to
keep the competitive nationalist forces united. Some of the political (communists
among them) and ethnic groups resented Aung San's policy. Thus, the constitutional
process and the national unification (described in the seventh chapter), during which
Aung San gained the consent of some ethnic leaders to the Union of Burma, was a
fragile one, or, as the author puts it: "the real miracle is perhaps that Aung San was
able to forge any union at all" (p. 213).
A contribution to the value of this study is that the bibliography is extensively
referencedwith regard to Burmese-language sources and basic historical accounts and
documents from libraries and public records in London and Washington. It should
be noted, however, that the author did not include several relevant books published
after 1988-the date of the author's Ph.D., on which the biography is based-such
as Maung Maung's important study on the Burmese nationalist movement (Burmese
Nationalist Movements,1940-1948 [Edinburgh: Kiscadale, 19891). Moreover, it is
regrettable that the numerous speeches of Aung San are not itemized, thus giving rise
to the wrong impression that he did not leave any relevant corpus of political thought
and ideas worth studying.
Naw has written a very sympathetic account of Aung San's life. In the course of
Naw's analysis, however, Aung San appears as a person without any complexity and
ideological profundity, an impression which is reinforced by the fact that any deeper
analysis of his political motives and actions beyond the chronological flow of events
is avoided. Moreover, ambivalent and historically controversial aspects such as the
cooperation with the Japanese-described as coincidental (pp. 63 ff.)-or his incessant
personal control of the army and the People's Volunteer Organization (PVO),
particularly after turning to civil life, are not scrutinized.
Finally, the readerdoes not learn much about Aung San's so-called innate ability
(p. 56), the reasons why he was considered as such an exceptional person, and other
cultural factors which finally turned him into-as Hugh Tinker once put it-"the
most potent force in his country's political mythology" ("Burma's Struggle for
Independence: The Transfer of Power Thesis Re-Examined," ModernAsian Studies
20[3][1986]:480). Obviously Aung San was more than just an arbitrary figure in
Burma's political history. In postwar Burma, he was often conceived within the
framework of cultural ideas about an ideal Burmese-Buddhist ruler, ideas which are

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 BOOK REVIEWS-SOUTHEAST ASIA 713

partly stimulated by traditional Burmese political values and thus transcend the mere
historical facts. In order to understand Aung San's life, his thoughts and actions have
to be contextualized within different discourses concerning Burmese concepts of
power, charisma and political legitimacy, the role of Buddhism in politics, and the
selective incorporative process of Western ideologies within the Burmese mental
tradition, and so on. Such a perspective would help shed light on the nature of power
in the Burmese context, as well as the current political situation in Burma.
Despite its commitment to an "histoireevenementelle," the present biography on
Aung San is a long-overdue, readable study. The readerwho is not yet familiar with
twentieth-century Burmese history especially gains a sound and comprehensive
introduction into Aung San's political career and the dynamics of the decisive years
of the struggle for independence.
SUSANNE PRAGER
Universityof Heidelberg

in Vietnam: Transformationand Dynamics. Edited by PER

Entrepreneurship
RONNAS and BHARGAVI RAMAMURTHY. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of
Asian Studies; Singapore: Institute for Southeast Asian Studies, 2001. xiv,
354 pp. $45.00 (cloth).

Per Ronnas and Bhargavi Ramamurthy have done the field of Vietnamese studies
a great favor in publishing this timely and information-packed monograph which
sheds light on the poorly understood workings of private enterprise in Vietnam. Over
the course of ten chapters, the majority written by the editors, the authors identify
reasons why some firms succeed, while others fail. They focus on the effects of
government policy on patterns of entrepreneurship,and prospects for convergence in
patterns of enterprise behavior in the north and south. By detailing geographic reach,
sources of capital, and supply and sales channels for enterprises, the authors construct
a detailed profile of the private entrepreneurin Vietnam, showing how this category
of economic actor, and entrepreneurshipmore generally, has changed over the 1990s.
The study is based primarily on two rounds of survey researchcarriedout in 1991
and 1997. The 1991 survey covered 923 non-agricultural enterprises in rural and
urban areas in the north and south. In the urban areas of Hanoi, Haiphong, and Ho
Chi Minh City 503 surveys were completed, while the other 420 surveys were
completed in the rural districts of Ha Son Binh, Vinh Phu, Quang Ninh, Long An,
and Cuu Long Provinces, the latter two areasrepresenting the south. The 1997 survey
reexamined less than half of the original sample but added new categories of
ownership, such as limited-liability companies, to the later survey population. Neither
survey round was limited to private enterprises but also included a smaller sample of
other ownership forms, such as cooperative and state enterprises, for comparative
purposes.
In the chapters that identify the features of winners and losers in the nonstate
manufacturing sector, the benefit of two survey rounds quickly becomes apparent.
Specifically, we gain a more detailed accounting of the kinds of behaviorsand problems
that hamper enterprise development in the private sector. We learn that the shortage
of capital tells us little about the success or failure of a firm. As a nearly universal
constraint in Vietnam, it simply does not reveal differences to a sufficient degree.
Transaction costs, such as those imposed by the bureaucracy,also seem to provide

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