Is it in India? Colonial Burma as a ‘problem’ in South Asian history

Despite being governed as an integral part of the Indian Empire for over 50 years, it is commonplace for historians to consider Myanmar/Burma as a distinct entity beyond what is usually taken to be South Asia. This is a heuristic separation indulged by both scholars of colonial India and colonial Burma and is in part a legacy of the territorial assumptions of Area Studies. Recently new geographic frameworks – particularly the Indian Ocean, Eurasia and Zomia – have begun to undermine the basis of this artificial division. Building on these insights, this essay argues that the apparent distinctiveness of the Burmese experience of the Raj might be a useful problem for historians of colonial India to think with.