Research often takes historians into unexpected tangents. This week, I started off continuing to read the Burmese anti-colonial journalist, writer and activist Thakhin Kodaw Hmaing’s Myauk Tika [Monkey Commentary] (1923)—which I have written about a bit here and also here before—and I ended up trying to find out more about Burmese haircuts in the 1920s….
Tag: Thakin Kodaw Hmaing
Burmese Nationalism and the Dietary Habits of Peacocks and Crows
During my last visit to the British Library I found this cartoon strip in the Burmese nationalist newspaper Thūriya, published in 1939. The cartoon character speaking on the platform is a reoccurring one in the newspaper. He is a bit of a hapless individual. His candid, ill-advised manner of speaking often gets him into trouble….
When Gorillas Smoke Cigars…
A few months ago I wrote a short blog post about Thakin Kodaw Hmaing’s Myauk Htika, a book about monkeys and apes published in Myanmar in 1923. Thakin Kodaw Hmaing was a Burmese nationalist and an influential early twentieth-century literary figure. His Htikas are texts—often about animals—written in the form of religious commentaries. They brought Burmese-Buddhist…
Theories of Evolution in Colonial Burma
Historians of natural history have long explored the emergence of evolutionary theory. Most of the studies that I have read on the subject tend to discuss its development and influence within an Imperial framework. The colonized world appears in these histories as a site in which key figures, such as Alfred Russell Wallace and Charles…
Anti-Colonial Primatology
Animal histories often attempt to de-centre the human in their narratives. They show instead how the actions of non-human animals have made possible and frustrated human activities. They also show how definitions of what it means to be human have been premised on contrasts with the animal other. In both of these arguments, animal historians…
Colonizing Animals 