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Having missed his “chance to be a part of things and to help,” he went to the Thai-Burmese border instead and stayed with student rebels who were there “not to flee the Burmese authorities but in a desperate and ill-placed hope that the West would arm them and help them overthrow the Rangoon government.”

Thant Myint-U’s handling of subjects outside his own world are top-down, detached and, at times, even slightly disdainful. But his book nevertheless brims with interesting anecdotes.  He makes clear that it is “not meant as a book for experts or primarily as a commentary o­n today’s problem but as a guide to the Burmese past, an introduction to the country whose current problems are increasingly known but whose colourful and vibrant history is entirely forgotten.” 

In the last chapter, nonetheless, the historian ventures into the near future, comments o­n the Burma problem and paints a grim picture.  If the country remains isolated—meaning if the West does not buy his recommendation of engagement with Burma—he predicts a return to the ‘‘anarchy and the conditions of 1948.’’

Ko Ko Thett, a Burmese researcher, studies world politics at the University of Helsinki