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Michael Aung-Thwin

Portrait of Michael   Aung-Thwin

Michael Arthur Aung-Thwin (1946, Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar) – 14 Aug. 2021, Hawai’i, USA) was a Burmese American historian and emeritus professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, a specialist in early Southeast Asian and Burmese history.

His parents — with brother John and sister Maureen -, journalist and scoutmaster U (later Moses) Aung-Thwin and Margaret Hope Hodgson-Aung-Thwin (20 Dec 2019 – 8 Apr 2011), divorced in 1955, at the time she was one of the first Fulbright scholars and lecturers from Burma. Margaret, who was of Anglo-Burmese, Arakanese and Karen descent, moved in 2019 to Kodaikanal School, an American boarding school in South India, where she taught first grade and piano, and took her three children with her. She was to become a literary translator and a linguistic advisor in Burmese language at Cornell University.

Margaret children 1955
Margaret Aung-Thwin and her children with friends in Rangoon in 1955. From left: Daw Aye Kyaing, Maureen, Eleanor Ferguson, Anne Ferguson, Margaret, Michael, John, Jessie Khoo (behind John), Sol Schindler, Lynn Silverstein, and Ray Ferguson (photo by Joe Silverstein, in Bulletin of the Burmese Studies Group, University of Texas at Austin, n 87 & 88, Spring/​Fall 2011.]

After attending the Kodaikanal school, Michael went to the USA, earning a BA at Doane College (Nebraska) in 1969, a MA at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1971, and a PhD at the University of Michigan.

Michael Aung-Thwin held Aung-Thwin held academic positions at Elmira College, Kyoto University, Northern Illinois University, the National University of Singapore (NUS), and the University of Hawaii-Manoa. Focusing on Burmese studies, he was also the director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University.

In an 1991 essay, he remarked: 

The literature on early Southeast Asian history of the past several decades has crystalized around two central issues: the origins of Southeast Asia as a distinct cultural and political unit and the nature of state and society in Southeast Asia. The debate over these two issues has resulted in apparently irresolvable structural and analytical ​“contradictions.” Did external or internal influences shape the origins of Southeast Asia? Were the Southeast Asia states ​“despotic,” ​“cellular,” ​“mandalas,” or ​“theatres” in form? Were kings perceived as gods or as men? Did ​“moral,” ​“rational,” or ​“competitive” principles govern the everyday life of most of the people? Was there true ​“slavery” or ​“attachment of privilege”? Was Southeast Asian society based on vertical patron-client relations or horizontal classes? Were relationships ​“feudal” or patrimonial in character? Many of these ​“contradictions” arose because analyses were not interdisciplinary. Historians focused mainly on events and the issue of continuity and change, whereas anthropologists were concerned with function and structural relationships. Political scientists searched for loci of power, usually between rulers and the ruled. And economists and geographers stressed the role of eco-demographic environments. Cultural influences were another dimension of the problem, as the (mainly) Western experiences of scholars (and hence their perception of the world) were consciously or subconsciously carried into the study of Southeast Asia. Most serious was the assumption that societies move in a linear, progressive manner-a belief virtually universal in nineteenth-century Europe and twentieth-century America, when our modern disciplines were created. To these circumscribing factors must be added the biases of Southeast Asianists themselves, centered primarily around their regional and period specialties which were projected onto the whole area. [“Spirals in Early Southeast Asian and Burmese History”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History vol. 21, No. 4 (Spring 1991), p 577 – 8]

Publications

  1. “The Role of Sasana Reform in Burmese History: Economic Dimensions of a Religious Purification”, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 38, n. 4, Aug. 1979, pp. 671 – 688.
  2. “Burma Before Pagan: The Status of Archaeology Today”, Asian Perspectives, vol. 25, n. 2, 1982 – 1983, pp. 1 – 21.
  3. “Hierarchy and Order in Pre-Colonial Burma”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 15, m. 2, Sep. 1984, pp. 224 – 232.,
  4. Pagan: The Origins of Modern Burma, University of Hawai’i Press, 1985.
  5. “Political Ideology: Conceptions of Kingship”, from The Origins of Modern Burma, University of Hawai’i Press, 1985, pp 47 – 68.
  6. “The British ​“Pacification” of Burma: Order without Meaning”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (CUP), vol. 16, No. 2, Sep. 1985, pp. 245 – 261.
  7. “On a Review of Centers, Symbols, and Hierarchies: Essays on the Classical States of Southeast Asia”, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 46, n. 2, May 1987, p. 381.
  8. Irrigation in the Heartland of Burma: Foundations of the Pre-Colonial Burmese State (Occasional Paper Series), 1990.
  9. “Spirals in Early Southeast Asian and Burmese History”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History vol. 21, No. 4, Spring 1991, pp. 575 – 602. 
  10. “The ​“Classical” in Southeast Asia: The Present in the Past”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies vol. 26, No. 1, Perspectives on Southeast Asian Studies, Mar.1995, pp. 75 – 91.
  11. “The Myth of the ​“Three Shan Brothers” and the Ava Period in Burmese History”, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 55, No. 4, Nov. 1996, pp. 881 – 901.
  12. Myth & History in the historiography of Early Burma: Paradigms, Primary Sources, and Prejudices, Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1998.
  13. “Parochial Universalism, Democracy Jihad and the Orientalist Image of Burma: The New Evangelism”, Pacific Affairs, vol. 74 n. 4, 2001 – 2002, pp. 483 – 505.
  14. “Origins and Development of the Field of Prehistory in Burma”, Asian Perspectives, vol. 40, n. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 6 – 34.
  15. [with Miriam T. Stark] ​“Editorial: Recent developments in the Archaeology of Myanma Pyay (Burma)”, Asian Perspectives, vol. 40, n. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 1 – 5.
  16. The Mists of Ramanna: The Legend that was Lower Burma, University of Hawai’i Press, 2005.
  17. “The Mon Paradigm and the Origins of the Burma Script”, from The Mists of Ramanna: The Legend That Was Lower Burma, University of Hawai’i Press, 2005, pp. 154 – 178.
  18. ““Mranma Pran”: When Context Encounters Notion”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, vol. 39, No. 2, Communities of Interpretation and the Construction of Modern Myanmar, June 2008, pp. 193 – 217.
  19. “Debate around The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia by James C. Scott, reviews by Michael R. Dove, Hjorleifur Jonsson and Michael Aung-Thwin, Bijdragen tot de Taal‑, Land- en Volkenkunde, vol. 167, No. 1, 2011, pp. 86 – 99.
  20. [ed. with Kenneth Hall], New Perspectives on the History and Historiography of Southeast Asia: Continuing Explorations, 2011.
  21. “A tale of two kingdoms: Ava and Pegu in the fifteenth century”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies vol. 42, No. 1, Feb. 2011.
  22. [with son Maitrii Aung-Thwin, professor at NUS] A History of Myanmar Since Ancient Times: Traditions and Transformations, London, Reaktion Books, 2012, 10 editions.
  23. Myanmar in the Fifteenth Century: A Tale of Two Kingdoms, University of Hawai’i Press, 2017. ISBN‎ 978 – 0824867836.