Myanmar. The authority of influence: Women and power in Burmese history. By Jessica Harriden. Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2012. Pp. 370. Index.

Abstract

The authority of influence: Women and power in Burmese history By JESSICA HARRIDEN Copenhagen: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 2012. Pp. 370. Index. doi: 10.1017/S0022463413000489 The authority of influence provides an overview of the development of Burmese women's role in their country's history. The author appears to include some ethnic minority women such as Olive Yang, Kokang state patroness during the 1960s, and a few representatives of other major minorities such as the Karen and Shan in this review. The book may have begun life as a doctoral thesis which has been slightly revised. Although it was published in 2012, the main perspective of the writing appears to be prior to the 2010 elections and the subsequent initiation of the reform processes, the major focus is on the misdeeds of the former military government. The author skips through many centuries of Burmese history up to the colonial takeover from 1826 up to 1885 with a general rendition of the historical trajectory, but without, however, contributing any innovative insights. The main conceptual framework appears to be that Burmese women (read also ethnic minority women) occupy a subordinate place in both Burmese history and society, but exert influence on their menfolk through their marriages and family connections. One feels like remarking, is this not also the way of the world in other societies both in the past and currently? The author singles out a few historical exceptions such as Queen Me Nu, consort to King Bagyidaw, and Queen Supayalat, consort to the last Konbaung dynasty monarch, King Thihaw, whose uncharacteristic accessions were marked by the usual distasteful bloodletting resulting in the loss of the kingdom to the invading foreign forces. No new perspectives are however given to the reader about these historical figures and their rather pedestrian interpretation and portrayals are standard fare. When one arrives at the redoubtable, revolver-toting, drug-smuggling Olive Yang, about whom there is already a very good biography, one might be forgiven for anticipating that at last the author will have found an exciting, atypical female to examine critically. But alas, Olive is passed over with only cursory treatment despite her very modern lifestyle and lesbian film-star lover. The author's description of some of the women involved in the exile movement and the long-running civil war promised greater reward and some of the information proferred about these females is revealing. However, not enough is made of this information and in the final analysis the author admits that they too were unable to rise to real power in their movements, but were mostly relegated to that subordinate role of influence without power which she sees as the province of most Burmese women. …