Gone Medieval - Burma: Medieval Superpower

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

Burma – now Myanmar – was once a superpower playing a pivotal role at the crossroads of Asia. Located in one of the richest areas on the planet, it produced luxury goods, mediated trade and cultivated fantastic religious and urban landscapes, unlike anywhere else in the world.In today’s episode, Dr. Eleanor Janega visits a new exhibition at the British Museum with curator Dr. Alexandra Green to explore how Burma in the Middle Ages became a fertile ground for diverse cultures to flourish.This episode was edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Rob Weinberg.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. When you think about Myanmar, chances are the thing that you think about is its ongoing military coup. And there's a good reason for this. The repression of Myanmar's people and the genocide of the Rohingya should, of course, be at the forefront of our minds. But the desire of the coup leaders to shut the country away from the world and violently enforce a homogeneity on its people, belies the fact that Myanmar is one of the most vibrantly diverse countries on the planet. Historically, there's never been just one way to be in Myanmar, or its historical antecedent

Burma. It wasn't until the modern period and the British colonization of the area that any such idea even existed. Instead, historically, it was a series of vibrant kingdoms, chiefdoms, and sometimes even empires, living in one of the richest areas on the planet. There, they produced luxury goods, mediated trade, and cultivated fantastic religious and urban landscapes, unlike anywhere else in the world. I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonika, and today, on Gone Medieval from History Hit, I'll be talking to Alexandra Green about the exciting new exhibition, Burma to Myanmar at the British Museum. We'll talk about the country's various kingdoms and peoples, how their material culture sheds light on their cultural networks, and the importance of elevating and celebrating history in times of crisis.

Alexandra, thank you so much for taking time out of your incredibly busy schedule to talk to me about this amazing exhibition. Thank you. My pleasure. One of the things that I think I was immediately struck by, which I think is so important in the context of discussing Burma or what is now Myanmar, is that people tend to say, oh, that's a country, right? But we're thinking with this really modern idea about, well, here's what a border is, and there you go, that's Burma. But actually, historically, what we're talking about is more of an empire, right? Well, I would say we're talking about empires, but also lots of different kingdoms. So historically, it hasn't been a single entity. And I think people tend to forget that once you have kind of the modern nation state borders,

people tend to think of that as a homogenous space, and it's not the case at all. So one of the things that we quite radically do in this exhibition is we pull for country apart into its historic bits. So we look at the kingdoms that were based in Arakan, which is part of that is today Rakhine State. We look at the ancient kingdom of Bago, which is in today's lower Myanmar. We look at the Sean States, which are in the eastern part of the country, and then, of course, we do look at Central Myanmar. Central Myanmar twice expanded to become effectively the largest empires in mainland Southeast Asia. So basically, second half of the 1500s, it stretched over a vast area.

And then again, in the late 18th century, it extended from basically late 18th, early 19th, it extended from what is today, sort of Assam and Manipur. in northeast India all the way over to Laos and down the Thai on Malay Peninsula. So I wouldn't say it's a single empire. It was obviously expanded and contracted. And then all the different kingdoms that were based in the area also kind of expanding, contracting and fighting with each other and engaging with the world around them, both militarily and through trade and through diplomatic engagement as well.

And you have excellent records for this as well. So, you know, I was noticing one of the first kingdoms that you really talk about eloquently in this exhibition is the pew. Am I saying that right? And they're kind of in central Myanmar, and we've got records from, you know, 200 before the common era. So there's archaeological evidence of the pew for about 200 BCE. You started getting kind of the rise of kingdoms a little bit later than that. So we have evidence of early kingdoms in what is today, Rakhine State, what was then called Arakan, from about 4th century.

So really early on. Yeah. The pew and Began, which is Yangon, which is the ancient, Kingdom of Bagan from about 1,000 to about 1,300, those have been best excavated. So we have the most information about that, but there is, you know, tremendous amount of information to still be found in what if they lower Myanmar. Still a lot of material to be looked at in Rakhine and also in highland regions as well as in the strong states.

And this is one thing that I did notice as well is that a lot of, you know, the kingdoms and they're not all kingdoms. You know, also there are cultural groups that have varying, kind of chieftains and things like that. It seems that possibly, and this is an outsider's view, geography plays into that a lot because, you know, central Myanmar, you can kind of understand why you have varying kingdoms there because we've got river valleys. It looks like it's a little flatter, but you've got places where we're really talking about incredible mountain passes and hills, so you get really differing cultures up there, don't you?

I mean, those mountain areas, the highlands really were dominated by various kinship networks and trade networks, but I think we underestimate them in terms of their political power. They were actually very powerful. They were between state-based political entities, but by controlling the passes, then they controlled trade, and then they also controlled diplomatic relationships between the states. So, you know, if you wanted to deal with China, for example, then you were going over these highland areas, and so then you had to deal with those people. So they function very powerfully as intermediaries between state-based entities. So the British underestimated them, but then also they were replaced once you had railroads and things, then obviously their role

became less. But they were once extremely powerful. I found that so interesting and fun as well, because we have kind of parallel with this in the medieval Europe, which is Switzerland. At some point in time, you're going to have to get over the Alps, right? And so you're going to have to deal with these people. And so this is this really kind of understandable worldwide thing about mountains is people to get through there. And especially when there's nice things to get through there. And I mean, wow, is that not the story of what's happening here is just incredible riches flowing back and forth? It's positioned between Indian China and on the Bay of Bengal, of course, land and sea trade networks. So it's phenomenally connected like that. And then, of course, the mountains were

substantial in terms of producing rubies and jade and amber and silver and gold and it is still an amazingly wealthy country. I was thinking about this because one of the first things you see when you come into the exhibition is this absolutely gorgeous carved teak. And it made me realize, you know, in my flat, I have kind of teak parketry and I'm like, oh, I see. So we're still so connected to these things, you know, and even, I think it was saying that about 50% of the world's teak for a while was coming specifically from there. It was a huge producer of teak. And yes, I was really excited to discover that chair. I was up. at Lord Curzon's family home, Kettleston Hall in Derbyshire.

And I had asked to see it, but I didn't, you know, they hadn't sent me pictures. It simply sent me a list of things that he had collected when he, as Vice Roy of India, he visited British Burma in 1901. It was up in basically sort of an attic room. And we walked in and I saw it sitting there on this plinths. And I was just like, oh my God, I must absolutely must have that for the exhibition because it's carved and just amazing high relief, which is, of course, typical for Burmese. wood carving. And what I loved about it is it's an object that obviously was used, you know,

on boats. It wasn't for the elite, but yet it was still just fabulously, highly carved. And then not only does it include traditional Burmese images like Naga, which is a mythical serpents, but then you have that angel with wings, which is clearly a European, and then, of course, the lion looks very much like a British lion. So again, this combination of vocal use, local imagery, you know, ideas that have come from further afield, which is basically what this exhibition is about, you know, how do people interact cross-culturally? And how do you then take ideas and materials from abroad and make them into something that serves, you know, what you need here and now? And I was really struck by this, especially, looking at the religious

objects and the varying statues of the Buddha, for example. So, you know, sometimes I would say, oh, wow, I almost thought that that was a Vajuriana Buddhist statue, which is to say, say, kind of Tibetan Buddhist. But, you know, here we are down in southeast, Asia, which is something completely different. But at other times, you have these completely different vernacular traditions. So influences that are coming from Sri Lanka or, you know, direct contact with India itself. And I think that is quite interesting because there's a tendency for people, especially, you know, in Europe to think, oh, Buddhism, that's one thing. Here's a Buddhist state, you know. And even kingdom to kingdom in one area, it can be completely different. Yeah. No. So we have.

some super interesting things on that front. I almost don't even know where to begin. Maybe I'll actually begin with the coin that you find in the case that looks at the kingdoms of Arakhan. And there was a time period from the 1500s into the 1600s when kings issued coins in three languages. So it was in Arcanese and Bengali and in Persian using Arabic script. But the coin that we had here was issued by a king who ruled from 1612 to 1622 in his official name, one of his official names was Darmaraja Hussein. Darmaraja is a Buddhist title, and Hussein is obviously a Muslim name. So, you know, you already people are combining things. It wasn't just a straightforward, this is Buddhism, and then they were practicing just that. You're changing what you do to suit

your local community. So that's one super interesting thing. The two Buddha images that you find in the Arachanese case look at those connections that Arachan had with the Himalayas. So there's a type of Chinese Buddhist statue called a Yongla style, which has a particular type of crown, and then wears particular types of jewelry. And that came in with strong connections between China and the Himalayas. And so that influenced Himalayan sculpture, which then, through there were monks that were traveling from Arakan up into Himalayas and vice versa. And then the Arachanese Buddha images started adopting this type of crown and this type of necklace. And then because of connections between Arakan and Central Myanmar, and then between Central

Myanmar and, of course, the Sean States, then this type of jewelry started appearing in Buddha images elsewhere. So it's not necessarily even the religion that's moving around. It's connections between monks and then styles move around. I was incredibly struck by one of the Buddha images as well, which actually seems to come from India, one of the most holy Buddhist sites, which is where the tree under which Buddha achieved a light minute is. Absolutely beautiful statue. But the thing that's incredible about it is that it's got script that we know is coming not from India. So there must have been somebody there with specific connections.

Yeah, so that's a very exciting piece. So produced probably in the second half of the 11th century. And it was found at Bodhaya, which is the site of the Buddhist Enlightenment, as you said, in northeast India. But those types of clay tablets were regularly produced to generate merit. So they were produced in their millions. They're all over the place. And because that piece was found at Bodh Gaya, and because the inscription on the side clearly was done while the clay was wet. And it's in the Maan language, which is associated with Lower Myanmar, clearly, you know, a thousand years ago, there was somebody from what was today Lower Myanmar in northeast India, obviously on a pilgrimage to the site of the Buddha's Enlightenment.

So people were really moving around. And there were a number of royal embassies from central Burma to Bodhaya as well. They helped repair the temple there. and then they replicated the architectural form of the Mahabodi temple, which is a temple at Bagan, and then they also replicated another art form. So you'll see on the other religious tablet that the Buddha sits under superstructure that resembles that of the Mahabodai. I was really struck in the exhibition book itself by these absolutely gorgeous vistas of all the stupas, like out on the plane. And I was so surprised, you know, to see how closely this does

resemble what I would expect to see, especially in kind of like northern India, places like that. And, you know, obviously, it just shows the amazing connections in Burma. You know, so you have a religious culture that's really spanning varying kingdoms and a vernacular that's moving back and forth. But it also speaks to how wealthy these people are. You know, they've got time. They can go up to India and say, oh, that's a really nice stupa you've got there. Like, we're going to make a hundred of those.

We can send bunks out. We can send people on pilgrimage who can then come back and say, all right, guys, this is how they're doing it there. Let's get involved. Yeah, but of course, people were bringing back souvenirs. You know, we think of, you know, souvenirs to something modern, but, you know, they're not. People were bringing back religious souvenirs to put in, you know, home shrines. You can see how architectural forms are in someplace else, and then you can replicate them here. The plane of Pagan has been past it. It's about 25 square miles. It's got thousands of religious buildings on it. So it's not only stupas, but temples and, of course, monasteries as well. It was a very wealthy kingdom. It's

officially considered to start in 1044 with the rise of King Anoyata. And then history books often says it ends in 1287 with the Mongols are pushing down into northern Myanmar and that destabilizes the kingdom and causes it to collapse. But it remains an important religious center. So in the 18th century, there was a revival and many more buildings were built there. And then even today, they've initiated a reconstruction of the sites for religious purposes. So obviously damaging them archaeologically for information, but you know, it's still a living Buddhist site. And that is the difficulty, isn't it? I think from the viewpoint of historians, you know, we're always like, oh, don't touch it. You know, it's historically significant, but these are

living sites, and you can't really tell people how to do their religion. So one of the other things that I think is really important to highlight is present-day Myanmar is this incredibly diverse place, and it's got hundreds of languages that are spoken, all sorts of different people. But what I thought the exhibition does a great job of highlighting is part of the reason you see that diversity is in the medieval period and into the early modern period. If you're waging more on other people, one of the things that you get out of that is you go grab people and you were talking about how important individuals as the spoils of war kind of is. And could you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah. So Southeast Asia historically is underpopulated. So it wasn't so much territory that you

wanted. You really did want people. And so warfare often resulted in sort of large scale, resettlement of people. And it wasn't, you know, kind of Atlantic ocean slave trade thing. It was, you know, they also wanted to use your skills. So you weren't necessarily just put to working land and under terrible conditions. You know, the elites were captured and then they would be elites in the new place. So the manuscript that opens the exhibition, it looks at a procession organized by King Minden in 1865. And it lists the various elites taken from the various surrounding areas, but we're now living as princes and princesses in Central Myanmar. The important thing is, of course, you get these phenomenal cultural transfers when that happens.

So some of the early objects and the lead image for the exhibition relates to central Myanmar's armies marching into what is today Central Thailand and sacking the kingdom of the UTIA, bringing back tens of thousands of people. And the result was that theatrical troops who had performed in Thailand were now performing in Central Myanmar. And the court absolutely loved them. And they not only developed a new form of formal court dress based on the Thai troops' costumes, but they also started performing the Ramayana story, which is the main story played by the Thai troops, but they started performing it around the country and also then replicating the Ramayana narrative in other art forms. So it became quite important in Myanmar, but after 1767.

So it was known before 1767, but its popularity just grew by leaps and bounds, once these Thai theatrical troops were in country. I think that is such an interesting kind of point about religion, because you start to get more and more influence and stories from what we would now kind of call the Hindu gods. And it seems like people in Burma are like, oh, that's great, we'll have that. Here, I'll take that God. I like that story without this kind of attendant need to then say,

all right, well, you know, we've got a whole new religion now, and that's what's happening. Yeah. So, I mean, Hindu deities were incorporated into Buddhism quite early on. So, for example, Brahma then becomes a devotee of the Buddha. It's not that you're erasing it, but you're supporting your main figure. And then Brahman's as ritual specialists were very important for courts in Southeast Asia. And so you had Brahmins that were brought in, and then they became part of Burmese courts. You had that at Ara Khan.

You have that in Central Myanmar. You had that in Lower Myanmar. So there's definitely evidence of what people consider to be Hindu elements in Myanmar from a very early date. these specialists, you know, were important part of the court. They set auspicious times. They were part of the rituals that basically supported the king, that legitimized the king, and that was right up until 1885. So one of the sculptures in the case that deals with Manipur

talks about the movement of Brahmins and their incorporation into the court, and there were figures of Shiva that were then part of court rituals and court paraphernalia. So you have all these wonderful Brahmin elements. You've got all kinds of different influences of Buddhism, but you also have Islamic governance that we see coming in as well. For example, there's an absolutely gorgeous Quran box that I noticed. Yeah. So there have been Muslim communities in Myanmar for a very long time, many, many, many centuries. You had, you know, traders coming from the Middle East from a very long time ago.

So absolutely, Islam has been part of it. And so I talked a little bit earlier about the coin issue by John Roger Sane. So you had, you know, Muslims in what was in the kingdom of Arakan. And, of course, a lot of the traders that were coming were Muslim. Some of them settled in the area. But, you know, kings were attempting to work with the communities that they were dealing with. You know, and that was not only local people, but that was traitors. And so there actually is very little.

I did struggle quite hard to find things that related to Muslim communities. Hard of that is because the British weren't particularly interested in them. And nobody has really collected this material. you know, from Burmese Muslim communities within the country also. So I was very pleased to discover the Quran box in the collection of the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore. It's produced in a very typical Burmese fashion. Mansi Shui Cha is what it's called.

So basically it's a wood box covered in lacquer and then set with glass inlay and covered with gold leaf. And so, of course, it's a beautiful object and would have been worthy to house a Quran. We do know that there were substantial Muslim communities. in lower Myanmar because of the coasts and all the ports. And then as I mentioned, also in Arakhan. So we have two trading permits in the case on Arakhan. One is on Palm Leaf and is in Burmese, but the same trading permit, they're two of the same. The other one's on paper and is written in Persian in Arabic script. And it's for an Armenian merchant who was based in Chennai in

Southern India. So again, you can see the Kings are really making effort to deal with larger communities and to be part of that wider trading world. And I was noticing that right away, too, because you know, you have all these incredible port kingdoms and things where we know things are going in and out. And there's this sort of misnomer about the idea of the Silk Road, right? When we talk about the Silk Road, people, A, think it's definitely a road. And B, that the only thing that it's moving is silk. But, you know, probably more things actually moved around, like from East to West and vice versa via the sea. And teak, oh, God. You know, they want that on the Silk Road.

Come on, rubies, anyone would, you know, give their eye teeth for these things. So you have these incredible port cities that are set up, and they're interesting because they're really connected in with, like, Sri Lanka, with varying other kingdoms out on the sea. And so can you talk a little bit about the seafaringness of it all? Yeah, absolutely. The ports were very, very important. You know, not only did they produce things, you know, both Arakhan and the kingdom of Bago were major rice producers and exporters, but then they were transshipment points. That was so important.

So they not only took goods that came over the ocean and then transmitted them by land networks up into, you know, southwestern China and northeast India, but then they also took goods that were coming from, you know, the highlands of Myanmar and, of course, China. And then they transmitted them the coast and then they put them on ships and sent them out. You know, they became wealthy because of that trade. And we have a fantastic storage jar in the lower Myanmar. case, the Bogo, Kingdom of Bogo case, where they were producing these. And these, we have a record from an Arab trader from 1350, where he talks about the importance of these jars and how they were very, very popular on Middle Eastern ships. They were used to store water and food and also

goods. So again, the trade was just an amazingly important part of the wealth of these kingdoms. I suppose that it just kind of shows that these things work both ways. You know, one of the things that you definitely see within this exhibition is you have all of these influences that are kind of from China or influences that are coming from India. But, of course, this is an exhibition about Myanmar itself. So that's what we're going to see reflected. But things from Myanmar then influence the outside world. And, you know, I would expect to see exactly the same thing.

And you do, for example, with Chinese pottery, where that's what everyone wants theirs to look like. And, you know, they start making their own versions of blue and white things, for example. And I think it's such an important story because there tends to be this narrative that it's like, well, there was China and then there was Europe. Well, you know, there's all these things in between that people are really hyper aware of at the time as well. And it's kind of our own desire to flatten things out into this kind of very obvious East-West nexus. No, not at all. And I mean, I think one of the important things that this show does is it shows how humans were kind of like sponges.

You know, you absorb ideas. You absorb new materials. Then you craft them into something that actually suits you, suits, you know, your clientele, suits, you know, the people around you. but then it really shows how interconnected we all are. So just to go back to your point about these materials moving around and things is we have a jade vessel in the show. Carved in China, but actually if you look at green jade from China, which was particularly popular in the 18th century at court, all that was mined in what is today northern yamar. So anytime you look at a Chinese green jade object, you'll know that that came from mines in yamar. And the communities there, those important jade trade networks from northern Myanmar into what is today, southwestern and southern China. And actually during the opium wars, when Britain and China were fighting over the opium trade, because China was engaged in that, then they didn't buy so much jade.

And so communities in northern Myanmar then really suffered because suddenly, you know, their livelihoods were effectively cut off. So you think, you know, wars in one part of the globe, you know, has an impact somewhere else in the globe. Absolutely, yeah. I mean, I think that that is what is so striking and important about this exhibition is I do think there's also this tendency to think that things like that are particularly modern phenomena. You know, we invented a war that impacts global trade in the 20th century. But you have this really sterling way of showing how things are moving back and forth in the medieval period and how people really not only consider themselves to be in dialogue with other civilizations, but like that's what shows. that you're important, what puts you on the map is that, you know, you're kind of sponging off of each other's cultures and you're moving back and forth. And they really seem to value this.

Absolutely. But I mean, I think we all do. If you look at European medieval times, it was all sorts of ideas that were circulating. We're all excited by something new, aren't we? You know, and you want to take that new thing and you want to include that into what you're doing. It's exciting. So absolutely. So the show definitely hones in on that excitement for the new, that, you know, interest in the news and then, you know, how do you then use that? I'm feeling that as well, just coming to the exhibition. I mean, oh my gosh, the textiles. And I'm like, how do I get a purse like that? There's an army back from the 19th century that I was just drooling over and like, oh, look at the pom-poms. You know, we still have these

kind of desires and, you know, this want to kind of communicate these things. And I think that comes across so well how, you know, these people are just like us in a lot of ways. Humans are humans, absolutely. Anyway, but notice the skirt that we're just sitting opposite here. It's for a wealthy Sean woman, but the purple velvet is European. The red and yellow silk is from China. And then the patterns are kind of local patterns connected with the Thai ethnic group. So that's T-A-I, not T-H-A-I, which is a separate ethnic group. But the Sean are part of that Thai group extends into southwestern China over into northern Thailand, Laos and Vietnam and parts of southern China as well. So I mean, these patterns are, again, something that you find kind of across the region. So it's

really exciting the way they've taken all these different materials and then this woman must have been so proud. And another thing that I was noticing was how you also have these incredible materials, but they're kind of hoisted off to particularized groups, which is something that you definitely see in kind of medieval Europe as well. So, oh, there's this beautiful, you know, still brocade from China, but, you know, only some people are allowed to work with it and work on it. And, you know, we see the same thing in European law, for example, where it's like, you are not allowed to wear the things that the fancy ladies wear and you can't wear purple. if you weren't royal and you're not, you know, so you have sumptuary laws and things.

And I was like, sumptuary laws. You know, I know about those. Exactly. No, absolutely. There were lots and lots of sumptory laws governing all sorts of things. And there are whole manuscripts, you know, delineating what different ranks can wear and their lists. So, yes, obviously that all was abolished when the British annexed it in the country in 1885. But I think another thing that the textiles really show us is fashion.

You know, remote communities, they're not timeless. One of the experiments that we did with the science department here at the British Museum is we looked at a series of Karen textiles over the course of the 19th century to see when synthetic dyes and fibers arrived. And oftentimes, you know, synthetic dye was invented in Europe in the 1850s. And then very quickly it was in so-called remote communities in Myanmar just a few years later. So clearly not remote, very connected through these trade routes. And then also they have a rotating market system. So goods moved around. I think that when you see things like that, when you see a quick uptake of textile technology,

or when you have sanctuary laws on the books, things like this, actually what it shows you is that this is a really wealthy bunch of people. Because by the time you have to say, hey, lower classes, you better not wear silk. That means lower classes can wear silk. You know, they've got the money they have, actually, the affluence to be able to do this. And I think now there's a real tendency for people to kind of say, oh, oh, Myanmar, that's a poor place, you know. And what this exhibition does such a great job of showing is it's actually, fabulously wealthy and probably just mismanaged.

Yes. I mean, it still is a very wealthy country. Its resources are simply very poorly distributed. So it's one of the world's largest exporters of rare earths, for example, which people need for their mobile phones and wind turbines. So things like that. So yes, absolutely, it's still a major exporter of jade, rubies. It still produces a lot of teak. That's, I think, part of the problem with the military attempting to seize those resources

and not distribute them. I mean, I think we kind of need to end talking about that because one of the reasons why it's so important to kind of sit down and think about how well connected these kingdoms were, how fabulously wealthy, their importance in the medieval period, you know, not only in Asia, but spreading into Asia Minor and into Europe from there is that we have a kind of posity of information about this, specifically because of the political situation that's there now. Yeah, exactly. Obviously, the political situation there is quite dire. The democratically elected to, government was overturned by a military coup in 2021, but it's been, you know, controlled by the military since 1962, so shortly after independence. The show does focus on the earlier periods because I think in times of conflict, we tend to forget history. We focus on the conflict. So I was very keen to actually show the complexity and the richness of Myanmar's history. But we do deal with host independence events. There is, of course, the closer you get in time to the present, the easier

is to find material. So then it's sort of like, how do you narrow that down? So we've narrowed it down by, again, trying to focus on this idea of cross-cultural interactions. So we've looked at people who loomed quite large on kind of the world stage. So we look at General Aung San, who was the man who negotiated with the British for Burmese independence. We look at the first prime minister, UNU, who on a world tour visited the U.S., the UK, giving Queen Elizabeth a silver tea set, but also Yugoslavia as he was trying to keep Myanmar neutral in the Cold War. We look at things like that. We look at Uthant, who was Secretary General of the UN between 1961 and 1971.

And he's super important because he was a man who negotiated between Khrushcheb and Kennedy over the Cuban Missa crisis. And his diplomatic skills are very well known, though today he's rather forgotten in that crisis. But he was the one who basically ensured that we didn't have nuclear war at the time. He was very instrumental. We, of course, looked at General Ne Win, who was the one who's the one who's, set Burma on the Burmese way to socialism in 1962 with the military coup in 1962, and then of course, Ansan Suu Kyi, who rose to prominence in 1988.

But then we also address, you know, kind of the impoverishment that resulted from censorship and the isolation that was imposed. And then we also continue the theme of ethnic multiplicity, and we look at basically what's happened to many of the ethnic groups subsequently. So we look at the Rohingya. We do look at how certain groups are pushing back against the homogenization efforts of the military. I mean, I think that this is such an important intervention

because really the only way that we can fight a specific desire to starve, people of information about a rich historical period and a rich place in the world that has overlapping cultures is to learn that history. You only get around this by the expression of knowledge and learning that, you know, things are complex. It's a tapestry.

It's not just a sheet of cloth. Exactly. And it's not a straight line either. So it's very complex. So I'm hoping that lots of people come and see the show and have a better sense of, again, that multiplicity today and in the past that you find in Myanmar. And then we do end with the coup

and we show images that artists were projecting on the sides of buildings as a form of protest. And they, through various networks, we've gotten some of those images and we're projecting them here. So to give people a sense that, you know, people are resisting. They're trying to struggle for some freedom. I have to say one of my very favorite objects was this modern Python sculpture done by a Chinese-Burmese armist.

And it is stunning. So this beauty that we see expressed when, you know, you have this time of peace and you have this time of trade isn't just historical. This is something that could be happening now and that we are losing access to because of war. Yeah, absolutely. So there was kind of a decade. where the semi-civilian rule, and it just threw the doors open to the international community for Myanmar artists. So she produced that ceramic serpent when she was on a residency at Jingda-jun

kilns in China, of course, famous for their long ceramic history. There was opportunities that then, of course, now are no longer available. Well, I'm so glad that you've managed to give us all the opportunity to engage with this history and these objects. I think this is an absolute triumph of a show. And thank you so much for letting me come along and nosy about in it. No, thank you so much for coming. And it's just a real pleasure to pull things out. And it was, as I said earlier, I was very excited to borrow from UK institutions because there's so much here. And let's get it out of storage and let's look at it and let's study it. Absolutely. Got to shed light on the beauty that there is, you know?

Absolutely. Thanks for listening. And thank you so much to Alexandra for her time and the British Museum for having me along to the exhibition. I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanaga, and this has been Gone Medieval from History Hit. And if you've liked what you've heard, don't forget to rate, review, follow the podcast and tell your friends about it. My co-host, Matt Lewis, will be back on Friday with more medieval goodness, and I'll be back next Tuesday. Until next time.