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Burma and the Politics of Teak

Dissecting a Resource Curse

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A History of Natural Resources in Asia

Abstract

Burmese history is closely associated with the teak tree. Identification of the country as “the land of teak” was reinforced in numerous fiction and nonfiction accounts. The elaboration of a large-scale exported-oriented timber industry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries demonstrated the economic importance of this resource. Teak was popularized and romanticized even as its commercial value was realized (Brandis 1888; Kelly 1912; Orwell 1987).

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Authors
  1. Raymond Bryant
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History, University of Hull, UK

    Greg Bankoff (Professor of modern history) (Professor of modern history)

  2. Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV), University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Peter Boomgaard (senior researcher, Professor of economic and environmental history of Southeast Asia) (senior researcher, Professor of economic and environmental history of Southeast Asia)

Copyright information

© 2007 Greg Bankoff and Peter Boomgaard

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Bryant, R. (2007). Burma and the Politics of Teak. In: Bankoff, G., Boomgaard, P. (eds) A History of Natural Resources in Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230607538_8

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