Abstract
Defining ‘corruption’ is notoriously difficult. Various authors with different disciplinary backgrounds have pointed out that the term has often been used to denigrate post-colonial regimes, depicting corruption as something that belongs to non-Western ‘others’.1 The sentiments of a recent commentator on corruption in Burma reveal how casually such essentialising moral judgements are made: ‘Burma is one of those countries where corruption is well known to the point of being conspicuous. … To Western eyes the flagrancy still comes as a shock.’2 The recent scandals of Enron in the United States as well as those concerning BAE Systems, parliamentary expenses, and the phone-hacking journalists at News International in the United Kingdom have somewhat muddied the waters of such patronising sentiments, but they persist.
“[B]ut I think I shall fine him. Yes, it is not improbable that I shall fine him.”
“And do you imagine that that will do any good?”
“It will do my pocket good to the extent of a rupee or two, provided of course, I do not remit later.”
“But him, I mean—do you suppose that it will do him the least good? I doubt it myself very much.”
“It will furnish him with further data for his misdemeanour tariff; that is about all.”
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“He will get from the fine a rough idea of how much it will cost him to repeat an experiment of this kind. Next time he will count up and calculate. If he is not quite sure that the fun is worth the fine, he will deny himself.”
Cecil C. Lowis, The Machinations of the Myo-Ok (1903)
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Notes
P. Perry (2005) ‘Corruption in Burma and the Corruption of Burma’ in N. Tarling (ed.) Corruption and Good Governance in Asia (London: Routledge) p. 188.
O. P. Dwivedi (1967), ‘Bureaucratic Corruption in Developing Countries’, Asian Survey, 7, 4, 245–53.
H. T. White (1913) A Civil Servant in Burma (London: E. Arnold) p. 143.
C. H. T. Crosthwaite (2001) ‘The Administration of Burma’ in P. H. Kratoska (ed.) Southeast Asia: Colonial History, Vol. 2 (London: Routledge) p. 213.
This imperialist argument is explicitly made in F. S. Donnison (1953) Public Administration in Burma: A Study of Development during the British Connexion (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs).
D. G. E. Hall (2001) ‘Anglo-Burmese Conflicts in the 19th Century: A Reassessment of their Causes’ in P. H. Kratoska (ed.) Southeast Asia: Colonial History, Vol. 2 (London: Routledge) p. 201.
R. H. Taylor (1987) The State in Burma (London: Hurst & Co.) p. 84.
A similar argument has been made in Anupama Rao (2001) ‘Problems of Violence, States of Terror: Torture in Colonial India’, Interventions: The International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 3, 2, 186–205.
My conceptualisation of misconduct as an illegality owes much to M. Foucault (1979) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books).
For British India, see S. B. Freitag (1991) ‘Crime in the Social Order of Colonial North India’, Modern Asian Studies, 25, 2, 227–61; A. A. Yang (ed.) (1985) Crime and Criminality in British India (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press); C. Anderson (2004) Legible Bodies: Race, Criminality and Colonialism in South Asia (Oxford: Berg); Meena Radhakrishna (2001), Dishonoured by History: ‘Criminal Tribes’ and British Colonial Policy (Hyderabad: Orient Longman). For Southeast Asia, see V. L. Rafael (ed.) (1999) Figures of Criminality in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Colonial Vietnam (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press). For Burma, see J. Saha (2012) ‘Madness and the Making of a Colonial Order in Burma’, Modern Asian Studies (Advanced online publication via Firstview), 1–30. Doi: 10.1017/S0026749X11000400; M. Aung-Thwin (2011) The Return of the Galon King: History, Law, and Rebellion in Colonial Burma (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press).
V. Lal (1999) ‘Everyday Crime, Native Mendacity and the Cultural Psychology of Justice in Colonial India’, Studies in History, 15, 1, 145–66.
A. A. Yang (1987) ‘Disciplining “Natives”: Prisons and Prisoners in Early Nineteenth Century India’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 10, 2, 29–45.
J. McC. Heyman and A. Smart (1999) ‘States and Illegal Practices: An Overview’ in J. McC. Heyman (ed.) States and Illegal Practices (Oxford, New York: Berg) pp. 1–24; A. Tambe (2009) Codes of Misconduct: Regulating Prostitution in Late Colonial Bombay (London: University of Minnesota Press).
A. Ireland (1907) The Province of Burma: A Report Prepared on Behalf of the University of Chicago, Vol. 1 (Boston, New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) p. 149.
B. N. Lawrance, E. L. Osborn, and R. L. Roberts (eds) (2006) Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press); J. Rich (2004) ‘Troubles at the Office: Clerks, State Authority, and Social Conflict in Gabon, 1920–45’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 38, 1, 58–87; J. Derrick (1983) ‘The “Native Clerk” in Colonial West Africa’, African Affairs, 82, 326, 61–74.
C. C. Lowis (1903) The Machinations of the Myo-Ok (London: Methuen).
Rich, ‘Troubles at the Office’; Sumit Sarkar (2002) Beyond Nationalist Frames: Postmodernism, Hindu Fundamentalism, History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press) pp. 28–37.
R. H. Taylor (2008) The State in Myanmar (London: Hurst & Co.) pp. 164–5.
For example, see, H. Fielding-Hall (1899) The Soul of a People, 3rd edn (London: Macmillan); J. Nisbet (1901) Burma under British Rule—and Before, Vol. 1 (Westminster: Constable); J. G. Scott (1910) The Burman: His Life and Notions, 3rd edn (London: Macmillan).
G. Orwell (1989) Burmese Days (London: Penguin). For more on the tradition Orwell was writing within, see S. L. Keck (2005) ‘Text and Context: Another Look at Burmese Days’, SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, 3, 1, 27–40.
This was also apparent in criminal punishment, see H. Fischer-Tine (2009) ‘Hierarchies of Punishment in Colonial India: European Convicts and the Racial Dividend, c. 1860–1890’ in H. Fischer-Tine and S. Gehermann (eds) Empires and Boundaries: Rethinking Race, Class, and Gender in Colonial Settings (New York: Routledge) pp. 41–65.
A. L. Stoler (2002) Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press).
E. M. Powell-Brown (1911) A Year on the Irrawaddy (Rangoon: Myles Standish & Co.) pp. 13–14.
M. Adas (1974) The Burma Delta: Economic Development and Social Change on an Asian Rice Frontier, 1852–1941 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press) pp. 38, 60.
J. Mackenna (1903) Report on the Settlement Operations in the Myaungmya and Thongwa Districts, Season 1902–03 (Rangoon: British Burma Press) p. 1.
I. Brown (1997) Economic Change in South-East Asia, c. 1830–1980 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press) p. 115; M. Adas (2009) ‘Continuity and Transformation: Colonial Rice Frontiers and Their Environmental Impact on the Great River Deltas of Mainland Southeast Asia’ in E. Burke and K. Pomeranz (eds) The Environment and World History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press) p. 198.
See J. Saha (2012) ‘A Mockery of Justice? Colonial Law, the Everyday State, and Village Politics in the Burma Delta’, Past & Present, 217, 187–212.
J. Mackenna (1899) Report on Revision Settlement Operations in Bassein District, Season 1897–98 (Rangoon: British Burma Press) pp. 29–30; Mackenna, Myaungmya and Thongwa Districts, Season 1902–03, p. 14; D. Chalmers (1908) Report on the Revision Settlement Operations in Pyapon District, Season 1906–07 (Rangoon: British Burma Press) p. 10.
Taylor, The State in Burma, p. 91; M. Adas (1981) ‘From Avoidance to Confrontation: Peasant Protest in Precolonial and Colonial Southeast Asia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 23, 2, 242–3; Cady, A History of Modern Burma, pp. 176–8; D. G. E. Hall (1974), Burma (New York: AMS Press), p. 149; Donnison, Public Administration in Burma, pp. 80–6.
M. Nuijten and G. Anders (eds) (2007) ‘Corruption and the Secret of Law: An Introduction’ in Corruption and the Secret of Law: A Legal Anthropological Perspective (Ashgate: Aldershot) pp. 9–12.
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Saha, J. (2013). Making Misconduct. In: Law, Disorder and the Colonial State. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137306999_2
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