Here are two parallel statements divided by an interval of 85 years. The first comes from the opening page of Burma As I Saw It 1889-1917, written by former British colonial official R Grant Brown in 1926. The second is from the closing pages of Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia, published by top Myanmar watcher Thant Myint-U in 2011.

Brown in 1926: “It is easy to see from the map that the northern part of Burma is driven like a wedge between two great empires; it is less easy to realize that the most important geographical fact about the country is its isolation.”

Thant in 2011: “What was barely discernible just a few years ago is now a readily visible fact: Burma, long a barrier between the great civilizations of the east, is becoming a new crossroads of Asia.”

Thant’s book is a superb survey of shifting territorial dynamics in the part of Asia where Myanmar happens to find itself, a real tour de force. It fully acknowledges that right up to the present day separation from China and India has been the most salient feature of its geography. It holds that all that is now changing as once almost impenetrable borderland forests disappear. It recognizes that this new Asian intersection could turn out either well or badly.

I wonder, though, whether Myanmar will become a true crossroads at all. Despite taking an entire religion from India, Myanmar’s detachment from its great western neighbour is visible on many levels. If anything, the two countries seem now to be moving away from, not towards, each other. Ties with China have long been firmer. Here too, though, relations are currently strained in ways that transcend changing geography, and look to be getting more so.

As Myanmar negotiates a return to international society after 50 years of deep estrangement, it is therefore an open question whether it will embrace its apparent territorial destiny. Just as likely is a scenario in which it remains a place apart, shut off in the future perhaps not so much by geography, but rather by a deep well of cultural and historical factors.