Mr. Charney examines 122 years of modern Burmese history, from the completion of the British conquest in 1886 to the monk-led protests in late 2007 and the devastation of Cyclone Nargis in 2008. Although he does not cover the precolonial era and the fall of the Burmese monarchy, his book could be regarded as the first general history of Burma since John F. Cady wrote a book with the same title in 1958, and D.G.E. Hall’s classic /History of Southeast Asia/, which was first published in 1955. Mr. Charney explores the forces that have made Burma what it is today: the colonial era, which saw the then-capital Rangoon dominated by foreigners, mainly Indians who had been brought in by the British to run the economy and public services; the Japanese occupation during World War II; ethnic conflicts before and after independence in 1948; and the disastrous “Burmese Way to Socialism,” which was introduced when the military seized power in 1962 and Burma began its descent into isolation and economic ruin.

The last two chapters cover the upheavals from the 1988 prodemocracy uprising—when millions of people across the country took to the streets not only in Rangoon but across the country demanding an end to military rule and Burma’s unique brand of socialism—to a similar, but somewhat smaller but equally failed uprising in 2007. While the military has remained firmly in power, the turbulent events of 1988 led to the introduction of what was supposed to be a market-oriented economic system. But, as Mr. Turnell points out, those reforms have turned out to be severely flawed, especially in the banking sector. According to him, a number of banks were “essentially moribund from the start—their creation reflecting primarily a desire amongst their entrepreneurial owners to enjoy the prestige of possessing ‘a bank’ as much as anything else.” Some were led by shadowy figures who emerged from the frontier areas and whose “financial institutions” United States authorities accused of being involved in large-scale money laundering for various drug lords.