Do States Make Nations?

The central importance of ethnicity as the major determinant of political identity in Myanmar's modern history has long been accepted as axiomatic in the literature on the country. But this essay, which reviews Myanmar's modern political history in terms of the issue of political identity, suggests that perhaps the past is an inadequate guide to the present, and new hypotheses may need to be posed in order to understand more fully the role of ethnicity in contemporary Myanmar politics. Indeed, it can be argued that Myanmar's more than 50 years of independence and largely self-imposed – or most recently, externally mandated – isolation has created new identities that owe less to the past, and more to the willing or unwilling generation of a new focus for primarily political identity for many, if not most, residents of the country. In fact, the question needs to be asked whether 50 years of civil war has not created a nation from the fragments that previously fought over what kind of nation to conceive. While it is too soon to reach firm conclusions, some tentative evidence suggests that this may indeed be the case.