Abstract
The reclusive military junta that rules Burma has kept the country out of the international spotlight. It only pops up after the latest tsunami, cyclone or popular protests, most recently in August and September 2007, after which it quietly disappears again from global attention. This country of 54 million is an imagined state. It was assembled piecemeal by the British Empire as East India. It did not previously, and has never since, existed as an entity under the complete control of a single central authority. Burma contains many different ethnic groups within its modern borders of which the numerically largest...