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Robert H. Taylor is a prominent scholar among those who study Myanmar. General Ne Win is an excellent, comprehensive and voluminous book which clearly illuminates the largely unknown life of one of the most enigmatic and controversial leaders of Myanmar and, more widely, of Southeast Asia. In 1987, the author wrote The State in Burma, which was revised in 2009, and was an analysis of the country’s politics, which charted its development from dynastic times to the establishment of a one-party socialist state by Ne Win in 1962.
Professor Taylor details Ne Win’s life from his birth to his role in the emergent politico-military force, the Burma Independence Army, on through Burma’s independence from Britain in January 1948 and then to the coup d’état of March 2, 1962. He goes on to examine Ne Win’s years leading the government between 1958 and 1988. This period in power rightly represents around 40 percent of the biography.
Ne Win (1910-2002), was born into an educated middle-class Burmese Chinese family in a small village near Paungdale, in Pyay District, Bago. Originally known as Shu Maung, there were claims that he was descended from the son of King Bodawpaya, who was sent in 1785 to invade and annex Arakan (now known as Rakhine).
In 1941, Ne Win was one of the Thirty Comrades who traveled to Hainan, China, to receive military training from the Japanese. As one of the Thirty, he decided to adopt his Burmese nom de guerre, Ne Win which means “brilliant as the sun,” or more accurately (according to Taylor) “bright Sun.”
The relationship between Ne Win and Aung San is an important one for Burmese history. Taylor addresses it as best as he can, writing that Ne Win “did not display any sign of disloyalty, in words and deeds to his commander [Aung San]” (p. 54). However, a contestable case otherwise was made by Brigadier-General Maung Shwe, latterly known as Comrade Bo Kyaw Zaw, who died in Kunming in 2012, and claimed from a standpoint of intimacy with his other Thirty Comrades that “Ne Win and Aung San quarreled frequently during their training.”
After the departure from Burma of the last Japanese troops, Colonel Ne Win and a part of the Burma National...