The devastating cyclone ‘Nargis’ struck the Myanmar coast on the evening of 2 May 2008. Prior to Nargis, no cyclone making landfall in Myanmar had ever been on the list of ‘deadliest tropical cyclones’ in the whole tropical region. Official figures reported that 84,500 people were killed and 53,800 went missing (). Nargis became the eighth-deadliest tropical cyclone in the world, in addition to leaving a huge impact on the social and economic sectors of the country, with an estimated cost of more than 11 trillion kyat (US$8,317,580) in damages.

The effect of climate change is evident when one looks at the case of Nargis, especially upon studying its track. found that the latitude of recurvature of Bay of Bengal storms in the pre-monsoon season had shifted southwards from the latitude of Bangladesh (>20° North) to the latitude of the Myanmar delta area (around 16° North). This latitudinal shift is clearly seen after the 1980s in the decadal average of 850 hPa winds. In addition, the decadal mean sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA) in the Bay of Bengal for the pre-monsoonal periods clearly show that they have changed from negative to positive, starting from 1980. Furthermore, a maximum positive SSTA centre is observed in the vicinity of Preparis Island, one of the Andaman Islands, from which most storms with a landfall on the Myanmar coast originate. These changes have had a significant impact on the region, as a result.

The high loss of human lives and property during Nargis was due to the high vulnerability of the delta areas associated with both climatic and non-climatic factors. This chapter discusses those factors so as to learn lessons, with a view to reducing the risks in similar disasters in the future. Disaster risk reduction and management will have significant implications for sustainable development in Myanmar.

Studying the history of animals in colonial Myanmar is a project that reveals new understandings of the impact of British imperialism, necessitating historians to attend to both the material and cultural transformations in the colony. However, studying animals and colonized people throws up two challenges to the historian. First, how can we recover the historical experiences of both within the same analytical frame. Second, how can postcolonial and post-humanist animal studies be integrated. This introduction offers an approach to studying interspecies relations as way of addressing these issues.

This chapter presents the book’s third case study, exploring how state transformation shapes China’s international development financing (DF) policymaking and implementation. DF is often seen as an instrument of economic statecraft, strategically deployed to advance China’s geopolitical interests. Contrarily, we show that authority and policymaking is fragmented and contested among central agencies, producing weak oversight for implementing state-owned enterprises, which have primarily pecuniary motives and scant regard for official Chinese diplomatic goals. DF projects thus emerge not from a ‘top-down’ strategy but in a ‘bottom-up’ way, reflecting the agency of buccaneering SOEs and recipient-country elites. The outcomes of DF projects – and whether they benefit China’s international relations – depend on how the specific interests on both sides intersect, as we show through comparative case studies of hydropower development in Cambodia and Myanmar. In Cambodia, Chinese DF was managed by a dominant-party regime in ways that bolstered its domination, generating warmer ties with Beijing. In Myanmar, however, socio-political fragmentation meant that similar projects exacerbated social conflict and even sparked renewed civil war, prompting a crisis in bilateral relations.

This chapter presents the book’s second case study: Chinese efforts to manage ‘non-traditional’ security issues in the Greater Mekong Subregion. It focuses on the challenges of illegal narcotics and associated criminal activity, particularly banditry on the Mekong river, to which China has become more exposed through its ‘reform and opening up’. Contrary to widespread assumptions that ‘Westphalian’ China is leery of undermining sovereignty, we show that Chinese agencies have actually moved to tackle these problems at source by sponsoring opium-substitution programmes and transboundary law-enforcement projects in Laos and Myanmar. The outcomes of these interventions depend on how Chinese party-state transformation dynamics interact with socio-political conflicts in these target states. On the Chinese side, opium-substitution has been hijacked by local cadre-capitalists in Yunnan province, skewing implementation towards their sectional interests. This has intersected with predatory social relations in Myanmar and Laos to undermine drug-suppression efforts. Conversely, Chinese central government agencies have had greater success in corralling neighbouring counterparts into a transnational policing network, recently cemented into a new international organisation, the Lancang-Mekong Law Enforcement and Security Centre.

The Myanmar Investment Law (“MIL”) and related statutory and institutional reforms (such as the Myanmar Investment Commission) seek to provide a level playing field for local and foreign investors; ensure adequate investor protections to promote investor confidence; and provide a nascent grievance mechanism for the settlement of an investor-State dispute. This chapter examines the framework and structure that the MIL advances to protect investors; and at the same time, to preserve Myanmar’s regulatory authority to pursue legitimate objectives that are consistent with international investment law, such as to prohibit investments that are contrary to the public interest, and to adopt reasonable measures to protect it.

The introduction to the book presents the context, scope, normative framework, core arguments, and the general structure of the book. It identifies gaps in existing literature on statehood and minority rights and explains the way the book addresses those gaps. The introduction especially elaborates the background of case studies and their relevance for the book. My unique approach to the case studies that goes beyond the vulnerability framework and instead focuses on the ways minorities are marginalised through the ideological operation of postcolonial states, is also discussed in this part. To support my analysis throughout the book, I have relied mainly on primary materials and archival sources, whenever possible. The research is also informed by a series of interviews with national and international organisations working in Bangladesh. My analysis is influenced by critical, postcolonial, and TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law) scholarship. Although the historical context is South Asia and the specific focus is on colonial India and present-day Bangladesh and Myanmar, many of the arguments, observations, and findings of the book should be equally relevant to other postcolonial states. The normative and pragmatic significance of the book beyond the Rohingya or the CHT crisis lies in this fact.

Is my theory generalizable to other cases of British and Spanish colonial rule beyond India? I use historical data to show that the mechanisms of land and natural resource extraction and lower development seen in Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh in India are found in other cases. The British used indirect rule in the "frontier" areas in Pakistan and Myanmar, which created structural conditions for insurgency. Within Pakistan, the Tehrik-e-Taliban insurgency since the mid-2000s in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP) has occurred in areas of erstwhile British indirect rule. In Myanmar, there have been multiple ethnic secessionist insurgencies in the periphery that were frontier areas of indirect rule. My theory can also be generalized to Spanish colonialism in Latin America. I briefly describe two cases of Spanish colonial land tenure institutions creating land inequalities and leftist insurgency, one is the case of Spanish rule in Mexico, which created conditions for the Zapatista insurgency, and another case is of Spanish and then American rule in the Philippines that resulted in the New People’s Army (NPA) insurgency.

The final chapter summarises the findings on the importance of understanding the role of intermediaries in rule of law assistance. As Myanmar struggled for foreign credibility and investment, the findings are also consistent with the global version – foreign actors’ influence and local dependence in societies where donors become an established but delicate feature of social, political, and economic life that people encounter on a daily basis. In this new landscape, intermediaries become responsible for navigating local and national institutions, values, and people. This book keeps both sides in view while focusing on the intermediaries. It also considers the extent to which the findings could be generalised beyond Myanmar and their practical implications for helping to advance enquiry into the field of rule of law assistance globally.

I had travelled to Hpa-an, the capital of Myanmar’s eastern Karen state, for a chance to meet with a local lawyer who worked for several of the foreign-funded initiatives of rule of law assistance – defined here as foreign actors’ transnational ‘project’ of supporting legal systems in fragile settings – that were initiated in the country after its political opening in 2011. While usually based in Yangon, the lawyer was in Hpa-an for one of his regular training sessions with local activists and lawyers. On my way to our meeting, I walked through the pitch-black streets of the small town in a country I still did not know much about to meet a person whom I imagined would have little patience with a foreign researcher asking questions about his work. As I walked into the tiny shed of a restaurant where we were meeting, I saw Zaw Win Thein’s dazzling smile, and I felt a sense of instant relief. His personality was inviting and friendly.