Thant Myint-U needs little introduction to this journal. Many readers will recognize him as the keynote speaker at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference in 2019. Today, he is by far the most influential English-language writer on Burma,Footnote 1 and his Twitter account has more than 143,000 followers.
Thant Myint-U is able to write for unusually wide audiences partly because he has had unique and remarkable experiences, about which we learn more in Hidden History. He was born in New York City, where his grandfather, U Thant, was the United Nations Secretary General. Aung San Suu Kyi, also working at the UN headquarters from 1969 to 1971, would stop by his home (p. 142). In 1974, he attended his grandfather's funeral in Yangon, which resulted in a violent crackdown by the military government when university students demanded a proper state funeral (p. 33). In 1988, as a senior student at Harvard, he flew to Bangkok as soon as he heard about massive protests across Burma, assisted students who arrived on the Burma-Thailand border (pp. 38–39), and campaigned for the harshest possible stance against the junta for a few years (pp. 77–78). By 2007, however, he began to publicly argue that economic sanctions and aid restrictions on Burma were counterproductive (p. 78). He left the United Nations and began working in Yangon. Thant Myint-U skillfully weaves this personal background into a historical narrative of contemporary Burma, which is presented in nine chronologically ordered chapters.
Hidden History is especially useful for the third through the last chapters, which cover a dramatic sequence of upheavals and transitions since 2007, including the “Saffron Revolution” protests (2007), Cyclone Nargis (2008), the political reforms during the Thein Sein presidency (2011–16), the rise of Aung San Suu Kyi (2015–), and the Rohingya crisis in Rakhine State (2017–18). The book succeeds in presenting an overarching narrative for this complex set of events in an engaging yet dispassionate manner.
Like his previous books, Hidden History is eminently lucid and readable, but it is different from them in that Thant Myint-U is very involved in the affairs that he seeks to describe and evaluate. For example, he worked closely with the president's office during the Thein Sein presidency. This closeness proves to be both a strength and a weakness.
Thant Myint-U expresses his admiration and affection for key actors as he draws intimate portraits of them. Nay Win Maung, who led the organization EGRESS in Yangon, as well as Soe Thane and Aung Min, two ministers in the Thein Sein government, are especially praised for instigating reforms, which, in the author's opinion, went “far beyond anyone's wildest imagination” (p. 132). According to Thant Myint-U, the reforms ushered in by the Thein Sein government were truly groundbreaking, whereas the following Aung San Suu Kyi government has been a series of disappointments (p. 224). I find it quite remarkable that even Thant Myint-U is not able to have a meeting with Suu Kyi (p. 161).
Throughout the book, Thant Myint-U's firsthand descriptions are compelling. Particularly illuminating is his illustration of the country's serious problems through his apartment hunting story in Yangon. He finally found an affordable apartment in a building, but no one knew exactly who the owner was. There were no taxes, but there were no regulations either. No one is sure who is responsible for repairs. “What was true of my building was true of the country” (p. 194).
It should be noted that some of Thant Myint-U's assessments and evaluations are far more contested than he suggests. For example, while we are given a glowing assessment of the Myanmar Peace Center, to which he was a special advisor (pp. 166–68, 174), the center's work has been severely criticized by long-term Burma observers such as Bertil Lintner.Footnote 2 Thant Myint-U's description of the conflict between Kachin Independence Army and the government also strongly reflects the perspective of Naypyidaw (pp. 168–71). It is difficult to deny that this book is written from a decisively Yangon/Naypyidaw-centric point of view. Whereas his previous booksFootnote 3 allow readers to meet a variety of people in different places in and around the country, readers barely leave Yangon in this book.
Hidden History gives the impression that Thant Myint-U is now too busy to travel and meet people where they work and live. This is especially glaring when it comes to his discussions of “ordinary people” and “the poor.” While Thant Myint-U insists that we pay more attention to ordinary poor people, his descriptions are flat and his diagnoses generic. The poor are represented by one particular woman who is profiled at the beginning of chapter 3. While the author tells us that her “life was not dissimilar to the lives being lived by millions of young men and women throughout the country” (p. 60), the book certainly would have benefited if it had offered thicker descriptions and included more voices. While the economy and poverty are supposedly core themes, the author does not identify a single study on these issues despite the growing body of literature.Footnote 4
Although readers of this journal probably want to know how Thant Myint-U sees the relationship between Burma and the rest of Asia, Hidden History shows little interest in Asia beyond his beloved country. While other Asian countries—especially China—are mentioned occasionally, they remain abstract entities without a human face. Thant Myint-U is eager to name and praise numerous diplomats from Norway, Denmark, Australia, and the United States as “sincere in a desire to help” and “friend[s]” (pp. 147–48). But not a single Asian is profiled for their work or friendship. (The only Asian diplomat quoted is a Malaysian UN special envoy who made an inappropriate comment on Suu Kyi's appearance [p. 77].) One would imagine that Thant Myint-U has strong reasons to work with Asians, as he repeatedly chides the West's efforts to isolate Burma and promotes a pro-engagement approach toward Burma's government, which is precisely the view long advocated, rightly or wrongly, by most Asian governments. Yet he dismisses the views from “the Asian capitals” as cynical and lacking innovation (p. 80). Perhaps Thant Myint-U's unshakable reliance on the West is a reflection of a more profound sort of cynicism.
Thant Myint-U points out that “the problem [of Burma] wasn't lack of interest or support; the problem was the lack of ability to analyze and imagine different futures.” To illustrate this point, he tells how a Burmese minister only understood his proposal of turning an industrial waterfront into a promenade when he visited Europe (p. 218). In this book, Asia does not provide Burma with a source of inspiration or a model for emulation. Reading this book makes us realize that it is far more difficult to envision inter-Asian ties for Burma today than it was seventy-five years ago, when Aung San declared that “Asia is marching” and Burma's future depended on the “helping hand” of other Asian nations.Footnote 5 As we imagine Burma's different futures, inter-Asian relations deserve more thoughts than Thant Myint-U offers in Hidden History.Footnote 6
