Description
Book SynopsisThis book tells the story of Burma's financial system - of its banks, moneylenders and 'microfinanciers' - from colonial times to the present day. It argues that Burma's financial system matters, and that the careful study of this system can tell us something more general about Burma - not least about how the richest country in Southeast Asia at the dawn of the twentieth century, became the poorest at the dawn of the twenty-first. While financial systems and institutions matter in all countries,
Turnell argues that they especially count in Burma as events in the financial and monetary sphere have been unusually, spectacularly, prominent in Burma's turbulent modern history. The story of Burma's financial system and its players is one that has shaped the country. It is a dramatic story of interest beyond the confines of economics and development studies.
Table of ContentsPreface; Acknowledgements; Note on Names and Places; Commonly Used Abbreviations; Timeline of Events in Modern Burma; 1. Introduction; 2. The Chettiars; 3. Cooperative Credit to the Rescue?; 4. One Bank, Two Countries: Imaginings of a Central Bank in Colonial Burma; 5. Aristocratic Eagles: The Commercial and Exchange Banks; 6. Reconstruction, a Currency Board and the Union 'Banks' of Burma; 7. Agricultural and Commercial Banking in the Parliamentary Democracy Era; 8. The Road to Ruin: Credit and Banking under Military Rule; 9. 'Reform' under the SLORC/SPDC; 10. The Crash; 11. Microfinance in Burma; Afterword; Bibliography; Index.
