Michael W. Charney
Description
Although the core of Michael Charney's research and teaching has been on societies in South East Asia, his training, teaching, and research interests are much broader and this is reflected in part in the focus in his work on issues of movement, contact, and friction in culture, technology, and religion in both the premodern and modern periods between cultures and in frontier zones as varied as Brahmanic and Buddhist interaction on the Chindwin River in Upper Burma, Islamic and Buddhist communalism in Arakan and Southeastern Bengal, Portuguese Catholic contact with Buddhist monks in lands around the Bay of Martaban, the meeting of Iberian and Malay cultures of war at Melaka in 1511, and most recently, American engineers and indigenous elites in colonial Ghana and the Shan States. His postgraduate education includes M.A. degrees in Asian Studies at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and Asian History at Ohio University (Athens), which included a minor in African history, and a PhD in History from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), which included, in addition to his core premodern South East Asian history field, teaching fields in premodern Chinese, Japanese, and Russian history and modern Southeast Asian history. After finishing his PhD at Michigan, he joined the Centre for Advanced Studies at the National University of Singapore (1999-2001), where he was a postdoctoral research fellow for two years working on migration and religion, and in the Department of History at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (2001-present). His three monographs include Southeast Asian Warfare, 1300-1900 (2004), Powerful Learning: Buddhist Literati and the Throne in Burma's Last Dynasty, 1752-1885 (2006), and A History of Modern Burma (2009). This most recent volume, A History of Modern Burma, was named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2009 by Choice Magazine, published by the Association for College and Research Libraries. He also co-edited three volumes related to migration, education in Asia, and Overseas Chinese communities, edited a special issue of South East Asia Research on indigenous warfare in South East Asia (2004), and was chief editor from 2003 until 2010 of the SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research. He currently (2010) is working on the history of railways in Africa and Asia, focusing in particular on the case studies of Ghana, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Japan. His staff page at the School of Oriental and African Studies, which has further information, can be accessed at Additionally, his author's page at Amazon.com can be found here
Books
Asian migrants and education
"The contributors to this volume explore the close relationship between education and the molding of modern immigrant societies through case studies of either Asian migrants or Asian immigrant societies. Examining the schools, kinds of education, and effects of education policies, the volume considers three questions involved in this relationship. First, what is the role of education in mediating the negotiation between social identities and identifications? Second, how do educational systems and policies in immigrant societies approach the diverse cultural agendas of immigrant groups? Third, how do the various actors in the global marketing of skills and education, such as labor migrants, students, and policy-makers, balance the relationship between education and skills-training? This volume will be especially useful for researchers, educators, and students intent on understanding some of the critical challenges faced by a globalizing world."
Chinese migrants abroad
"Fast-paced economic growth in Southeast Asia from the late 1960s until the mid-1990s brought increased attention to the overseas Chinese as an economically successful diaspora and their role in this economic growth. Events that followed, such as the transfer of Hong Kong and Macau to the People's Republic of China, the election of a non-KMT government in Taiwan, the Asian economic crisis and the plight of overseas Chinese in Indonesia as a result, and the durability of the Singapore economy during this same crisis, have helped to sustain this attention. The study of the overseas Chinese has become a global enterprise, raising new theoretical problems and empirical challenges. New case studies of overseas Chinese, such as those on communities in North America, Cuba, India and South Africa, continually unveil different perspectives. New kinds of transnational connectivities linking Chinese communities are also being identified. It is now possible to make broader generalizations of a Chinese diaspora, on a global basis. Further, the intensifying study of the overseas Chinese has stimulated renewed intellectual vigour in other areas of research. The transnational and transregional activities of overseas Chinese, for example, pose serious challenges to analytical concepts of regional divides such as that between East and Southeast Asia. Despite the increased attention, new data, and the changing theoretical paradigms, basic questions concerning the overseas Chinese remain. The papers in this volume seek to understand the overseas Chinese migrants not just in terms of the overall Chinese diaspora per se, but also local Chinese migrants adapting to local societies, in different national contexts. " publisher
Southeast Asian Warfare, 1300-1900 (Handbook of Oriental Sudies/Handbuch Der Orientalistik)
"This study of warfare in Southeast Asia between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries examines the chief aspects of warfare in the region. It begins with an examination of the cultural features that made warfare in the region unique, followed by a discussion of the main weapons used, and the two major sites of fighting, sieges and naval contests. Three chapters examine the role played by animals such as elephants and horses. The final two chapters examine the shift from mercenary armies and masses of levies to smaller standing armies. The study closes with an examination of the tumultuous nineteenth century, in which European naval power won the coast and rivers, while Southeast Asians held the advantage further inland." from publisher.
Powerful Learning: Buddhist Literati and the Throne in Burma's Last Dynasty, 1752-1885
"Powerful Learning is the first intellectual history of one of the great Buddhist empires of Southeast Asia, Konbaung Burma, before the British conquest. The book challenges the notion of the court and the monastic order as static institutions by examining how competition within and between them prompted major rethinking about the intellectual foundations of indigenous society and culture. The catalyst for this reformation of indigenous thought was the rise of a small clique of Buddhist monks and lay people from the frontier to commanding positions in the state and monastic order over the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This clique had a major influence on the creation of state myths, the ways in which the throne ruled and presented itself, and, ultimately, the relationship between the throne and the state. The new state and monastic orthodoxy, however, was challenged by other Burmese literati, who, over the course of the nineteenth century, sought in Western science, technology, and political theory other ways in which to shape Burmese perspectives on state and society. In the process, the Burmese underwent a difficult transition from premodern to modern intellectual thought, one that helped usher in British rule." from publisher
Approaching transnationalisms
"The term 'transnationalism' has gained considerable academic and popular currency despite a lack of clear definitions, in part because its overall form changes as its influence incorporates additional spheres of daily life on a variety of scales and contexts. The purpose of this volume is to bring together different perspectives on this phenomenon, using case studies that represent some of the most current thinking on 'transnationalism' in a wide range of disciplines. Central themes which this book explores include legal and economic reactions to transnational migration; the (re)negotiation of identities in the context of changing national, social and cultural identities; and the emergence of new imaginings of home and social space in transnational communities. Approaching Transnationalisms: Studies on Transnational Societies, Multicultural Contacts and Imaginings of Home foregrounds powerful transnational forces crossing the boundaries of nation-states, and at the same time, gives attention to the continued significance of the nation-state and the diversity of localized reactions to transnational challenges." publisher
Imperial Military Transportation in British Asia
"Imperial Military Transportation in British Asia sheds light on attempts by royal engineers to introduce innovations devised in the UK to wartime India, Iraq, and Burma, as well as the initial resistance of local groups of colonial railwaymen to such metropolitan innovations. Michael W. Charney looks at the role of the railways in the First Burma Campaign to show how some kinds of military technology - as an example of imperial knowledge - faced resistance due to 1930s-era colonial insularity. The delay this caused significantly compromised the early defense of the colony when the Japanese invaded in 1942. Charney examines the efforts made by one engineer in particular to revive the railways and shows how this effort was responsible for the development of a truly imperial technology that was suitable for extra-European contexts and finally won acceptance in India. Incorporating newly accessible primary source material from the files of the military Director of Transportation during the Campaign, this book highlights a hitherto unfilled gap in the archival record and explores an ignored but crucial aspect of the 1942 Japanese invasion of Burma."--Bloomsbury Publishing.