Historical Context

Democratization necessarily takes place within a specific national context marked by prior historical experience. This chapter examines historical factors in the Myanmar case as a means of understanding the social and political underpinnings of the current transition. It focuses on legacies of colonization by Britain in the middle of the nineteenth century, a growing nationalist struggle and devastating warfare in the first half of the twentieth century, shifting forms of civil conflict since independence, a phase of liberal democracy in the initial years of state sovereignty, and military-backed or military-directed authoritarianism for nearly half a century thereafter. It looks particularly at the impact of successive colonial, democratic, and military regimes, and at crosscutting legacies of repression, militarization of ethnic relations, and social exclusion of the Rohingya Muslim minority.