On journeys during the summer, I worked my way through Mandy Sadan’s magnum opusBeing and Becoming Kachin: Histories beyond the State in the Borderworlds of Burma. It’s a terrific achievement, providing insights into not only the Kachin people, but also the country in which they currently find themselves. Anyone with an interest in modern Burma and contemporary Myanmar will want to read it – and also to take a look at some of the source materials on the accompanying website.

Now standing at some distance from the book and thinking about how to convey some of its many themes, I figure there’s no need to file a full review – that’s already been very ably done by Magnus Fiskesjö at New Mandala. Rather, I plan over five successive days to pick up very briefly on parts of the analysis that particularly interest me. All come from the past 70 years or so, opening with warfare, imperial collapse and independence, and moving forward from there. All have contemporary relevance. None is entirely unknown to historians.

I begin today with being and becoming Kachin – the core theme announced in the book’s title. The full process stretches across more than two hundred years from the late eighteenth century down to today. It ranges across both internal and external borders, and is embedded in national, regional and global histories. A particularly important phase dates to the early 1960s, however, and especially to the emergence in 1961 of the Kachin Independence Army as a standard bearer for militarized ethno-nationalism.

Sadan argues that the development of a military-administrative infrastructure, a legacy partly of the colonial period and partly of the Second World War, triggered significant social change in Kachin State. For instance, the residual social powers of local chiefs disrupted the operational logistics of the insurgency. “It was early on decided, therefore, that chiefly powers had to be abolished” (333). Cultural practices were also standardized, and a degree of conceptual order was generated through articulation of an “ideological definition of being and becoming Kachin” (337). Underpinned by “an organisational structure designed for conflict, not local development” (334), a potent militarized ethnic cause was established.

It is this ethnic identity, added to many layers of historical development but given a forceful twist by the rise of the KIA little more than 50 years ago, that has come down to today. It is with this identity that anyone promoting projects of national reconciliation and peace building must contend.