Building States within Societies: Repression and Education in British Burma

Abstract

This dissertation project investigates the historical development of states under severe fiscal constraints and in the presence of existing institutions in society. Focusing on British Burma as the key empirical case, it reveals how colonial governments responded to local political history and indigenous institutions that preceded colonial rule. To provide empirical evidence, the project develops original data on pre-colonial, colonial, and post-independence Burma, including one based on administrative records of the pre-colonial state in the eighteenth century.

In Chapter Two, I explain the spatial variations in the development of state coercion under colonial rule. I introduce a theoretical framework linking pre-colonial history to colonial coercion and argue that early experience with state consolidation before colonization mitigated local society's contention with the colonial state, reducing colonial investments in coercion. For empirical evidence, I developed original data of headman appointment status from pre-colonial land revenue inquests in 1783 (sit-tans) and colonial police presence as recorded in 1912 and 1924 British Burma district gazetteers. Empirical findings show that locations exposed to pre-colonial state consolidation were less likely to have civilian and military police presence. Further evidence reveals that colonial police presence, whose infrastructure the present-day Burmese military inherited, left consequences for post-independence conflict; places with civilian and military police presence also had more post-independence conflict events in their vicinity.

In Chapter Three, I introduce a formal model conceptualizing colonial education policy as a response to indigenous education institutions and resistance against colonial rule. In this model, government's decisions over whether to rely on indigenous institutions (indirect involvement) or replace them with a new system (direct involvement) determined education's ability to mitigate anti-colonial resistance. In this two-actor, two-period strategic interaction between the colonial government and indigenous society, while colonial government relied on indigenous education under low local resistance, increasing resistance fueled the perceived association between indigenous education and resistance against state control. This motivated governments to directly involve in education as they replaced indigenous education with a new system under stronger state control. The theoretical conclusions contribute to recent studies in political economy of education that examine how state interests in political indoctrination drove the rise of mass education in non-democratic states.

In Chapter Four, I evaluate the utility of previous formal model in explaining the historical context of colonial education in British Burma. Based on its empirical implications, I hypothesize that direct educational involvement by the colonial state occurred when indigenous education level and anti-colonial resistance were both sufficiently high. Using original panel data of 33 British Burma districts over two decades (1901-20), when a transformation from earlier state reliance on Buddhist monastic education to a secular school system occurred. The findings suggest that significant increases in female enrollment, a key measure of state involvement as Buddhist monastic schools excluded women, occurred in districts with high Buddhist male literacy and high numbers of riots. Local factor endowments or the presence of Christian missionaries cannot explain the results. With these three substantive chapters, the dissertation highlights the interconnected relationships between pre-colonial history, anti-colonial resistance, and state development in coercion and education.