Fiery Dragons: Banks, Moneylenders and Microfinance in Burma

by Sean Turnell

This 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.

"… highly fascinating reading, which is also thanks to the author’s lucid writing. It illuminates a subject that was marginalised in scholarly studies." - Susanne Prager Nyein, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Vol. 40, No. 4, 2010

Sean Turnell is currently Economic Advisor to the Myanmar government, a Senior Research Fellow at the Myanmar Development Institute, and an Associate Professor of Economics at Macquarie University in Sydney. A leading researcher of Myanmar’s economy for over 20 years, he has been an adviser about this to various governments, international agencies, NGOs, etc. as well as a key adviser on economic policy to Myanmar’s National League for Democracy and its chairperson, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The author of numerous academic and other studies of Myanmar, his seminal study into the country’s monetary and banking history, Fiery Dragons (see below), was published by NIAS Press in 2009.

Publication year: 2009
412 pp / 229mm x 152mm
42 tables
ISBN: 978-87-7694-040-9, Paperback
ISBN: 978-87-7694-041-6, Hardback

NIAS Press