Cultural diplomacy in times of crisis: the British Council’s departure from Burma during the military dictatorship (1962-1966)

ABSTRACT In 1948, when Burma became independent, the British colonial administration left the country and was replaced by a British embassy and a British Council centre, in order to establish new diplomatic relations. Cultural diplomacy appeared as a good, informal way of furthering the embassy’s initial goal of promoting peaceful and preferential diplomatic relations between Burma and Britain after the colonial era. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the British Council offered English classes to the Burmese public and encouraged the development of academic partnerships between the two countries. Yet in 1962, a military coup led by General Ne Win overthrew Prime Minister U Nu’s democratically elected government and disrupted Anglo-Burmese relations. In the name of strict neutrality in foreign affairs, Ne Win’s Revolutionary Council restricted all foreign cultural missions’ actions in Burma, notably their ability to teach foreign languages to Burmese students, until the British Council was eventually forced to close down and transfer some of its remaining missions to the British embassy in 1967. Based on British Council archives gathered at the National Archives in London, this article examines a forced ‘diplomatic departure’, by focusing on the impact of the Burmese internal political crisis on Anglo-Burmese diplomatic and cultural relations.