Myanmar
Since 1989 the military authorities in Burma have promoted the name Myanmar as a conventional name for their state; this decision was not approved by any sitting legislature in Burma, and the U.S. Government did not adopt the name.
Burma's prehistory begins with the migration of three groups into the country: the Mons from what is now Cambodia, the Mongol Burmese from the eastern Himalayas and Thai tribes from northern Thailand. The 11th-century Burmese kingdom of Bagan was the first to gain control of the territory that is present-day Burma, but it failed to unify the disparate racial groups and collapsed before a Tartar invasion in 1287. For the next 250 years, Burma remained in chaos.
Occasional border clashes and British imperialist ambitions caused the British to invade in 1824, 1852 and 1883. Burma became a part of British India and the British built the usual colonial infrastructure, which helped to develop the country into a major rice exporter. Indians and Chinese arrived with the British. In 1937, Burma was separated from British India and there was nascent murmuring for self-rule. The Japanese drove the British from Burma in World War II and attempted to enlist Burmese support politically. The Burmese were briefly tempted by an opportunity for independence, but a resistance movement soon sprang up. In 1948, Burma became independent and almost immediately began to disintegrate as hill tribes, communists, Muslims and Mons all revolted.
In 1962, an army revolt led by General Ne Win deposed the democratic government and set the country on the path of socialism. The Burmese economy crumbled over the next 25 years until, in 1987 and 1988, the Burmese people decided they had had enough. Huge demonstrations called for Ne Win's resignation and massive confrontations between pro-democracy demonstrators and the military resulted in 3,000 deaths in a six-week period.
Burma is a resource-rich country that suffers from abject rural poverty. The military regime took steps in the early 1990s to liberalize the economy after decades of failure under the "Burmese Way to Socialism" but those efforts have since stalled. Burma has been unable to achieve monetary or fiscal stability, resulting in an economy that suffers from serious macroeconomic imbalances, including an official exchange rate that overvalues the Burmese kyat by more than 100 times the market rate. In addition, most overseas development assistance ceased after the junta suppressed the democracy movement in 1988 and subsequently ignored the results of the 1990 election.
Despite renewed border committee talks, significant differences remain with Thailand over boundary alignment and the handling of ethnic guerrilla rebels, refugees, smuggling, and drug trafficking in cross-border region. Burmese attempts to construct a dam on border stream with Bangladesh in 2001 prompted an armed response halting construction; Burmese Muslim migration into Bangladesh strains Bangladesh's meager resources.
