"Ethnic conflict has dominated the political landscape of Burma (Myanmar) since independence from Great Britain in 1948. In the process, countless lives have been lost, many communities dislocated from their homes, and a country that was deemed to have the brightest future of any of its Asian neighbors at independence has stagnated to become one of the world’s poorest. In such state failures, tragedy is interwoven with irony. Burma, indeed, is the land where the anthropologist Edmund Leach carried out his ground-breaking studies into patterns of cultural inter-change among peoples. In essence, Leach concluded that ethnic and political identities are neither innate nor inflexible, but develop on the basis of understandings and cultural exchanges between different societies. Since this time, ethnic field research in Burma has come to a virtual halt. The world of Asian studies thus owes a profound debt of gratitude to Prof. Josef Silverstein. Since the 1950s, his writings on ethnic questions have stood out as a persistent – and often lone – beacon of concerned but independent analysis. At the beginning of the 21st century, his works are as pertinent as when he first began. Not only has he crystallized complex issues in understandable form, but he has done this in a language that has become common currency in many international understandings of the country and its challenges. A particular issue in Burmese politics over the past 60 years has been the lack of common forums or platforms where different parties and nationalities might equally work together. As Prof. Silverstein has described, underpinning these failures is the ‘dilemma of national unity’.1 Important ethnic questions date back to the pre-colonial past. But, in general, the modern roots of many problems can be found in the political divisions of Burma, under a diarchic system, between ‘Ministerial Burma’ and the ethnic minority ‘Frontier Areas Administration’ during British rule. Inter-communal relations were then exacerbated by conflict during the Second World War, and the challenge of national unity has remained evident in all political eras since Burma’s independence in 1948..."