Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2024. US$32.00, paper. ISBN 9781501777141.
In InterAsian Intimacies Across Race, Religion, and Colonialism, Chie Ikeya extends her exploration of womanhood in modern Burma, a theme first introduced in her previous monograph, Refiguring Women, Colonialism, and Modernity in Burma (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011). This time, she broadens the scope to examine the intersections of gender, race, and religion in Burma over the past centuries. Intimate relationships are the focus here, which are often—but not exclusively—manifested through marriage, family, and sexuality. She compellingly argues that these interAsian intimacies are a crucial site for the “production of difference” (196) within colonial, imperial, and nationalist discourses.
InterAsian Intimacies weaves together intergenerational memories of families and friends, popular writings by historical figures, and archival sources in English and Japanese to untangle the relationships among Asians—both local and immigrant—in Burma, a cosmopolitan locale where interracial interactions had been common even prior to British colonization in 1824. Chapter 1 sets the scene by tracing Auntie Rosie’s family tree back three generations, after which Ikeya takes colonial legal cases under scrutiny in the following three chapters. Here, she interrogates the construction and regulation of racial, gender, and religious boundaries in British Burma. Readers will be struck by the numerous challenges—and at times absurdities— within the colonial judicial system, in cases involving intermarriages among Buddhist, Muslim, and Hindu Asians and disputes over property rights and familial matters.
Arranged in a loosely chronological order, chapters 5 and 6 bring us to the early twentieth century, when interAsian intimacies became a focal point to nationalist struggles for independence, symbolizing the convergence of female emancipation and national liberation. The final two chapters look at the period during and shortly after World War II, and examine the reconfiguration of such intimacy under a new ruling power—Japan, a fellow Asian nation—which had used racial salvation as a foundational justification for the war.
Fascinating and at times disturbing details abound. In one legal case, the Burmese Buddhist wife of a Chinese man was described as exhibiting distinctly Chinese cultural traits (91), which served as strong evidence to validate her late husband’s posthumous property arrangement under Chinese customary law (which permitted inheritance of family estate only through male descendants). As a historian working on the Sino-Burmese community, I find it striking that such traits, while accepted by the colonial court, would never have been sufficient to establish the woman’s Chineseness within the community itself. The names of Burmese wives regularly appeared on donation lists of Chinese temples and on tombstones in Chinese cemeteries across the country, yet always with an unmistakable prefix marking their non-Chinese origin. But of course, Ikeya is not concerned with questions of cultural or social identification. Rather, she persuasively demonstrates that what individuals felt was of little consequence in colonial courtrooms. What mattered was how the racial identities, gender, and religions of colonial subjects were shaped, classified, and legalized within the discourse of colonial governance and through its everyday administrative practice, invariably following a logic that served the interests of the powerful, whether British, or later, Japanese and Burmese nationalists.
Therefore, zerbadis (the offspring of Muslim Indian men and Burmese women) were consistently portrayed as perceived “others” to Burmese Buddhists, despite their long-term practice of racial intermingling and religious conversion (and reconversion). Similarly, Burmese women were depicted as passive, naïve, and easily deceived by both Burmese nationalists and the Japanese to legitimize their respective political goals, in contrast to many family stories revealing the unequivocal strength, agency, adaptability, and astuteness of female members who navigated, and sometimes disrupted, the “patrilineal alliance” (98) between the masculine colonial regime and Burmese male authority.
Another central thread underlying the book is the equally influential and manipulative ideology of Burmese Buddhist exceptionalism. The perceived Burmese Buddhist openness to intermarriage was a colonial misconception from the outset (55). In fact, the Kongbaug kings, envisioning themselves as world conquerors, understood intermarriage and tolerance as “a modality of social control” (57) to subject “others” to the realm of Burmese Buddhist kingship. Following the same rationale, the colonial regime insisted on the religious and racial incompatibilities of Indo-Muslim men, and relegated their Burmese Buddhist wives to “otherness” by depriving them their rights. These “Indian mistresses” became flashpoints in several landmark nationalist struggles, including Indo-Burmese conflicts, the separation of Burma from British India, and the discussion and enactment of the Buddhist Women’s Special Marriage and Succession Act.
For readers familiar with conventional colonial knowledge production and historiographical stereotypes, this book offers a thought-provoking reading experience. Yet I find it invigorating to be reminded of the many hidden layers and implications that complicate prevailing public and scholarly understandings. Particularly important is the critical assessment of Burmese Buddhist exceptionalism, a discourse often overlooked both historically and in the present day, perhaps overshadowed by the more visible political crises and violent conflicts in the country. The recent Rohingya genocide is merely the tip of a deeper, long-standing interAsian tension. Traces of this tension are evident throughout this book—for instance, the shared sense of insecurity experienced by interAsian families during the Japanese occupation, who felt threatened by the invading Japanese and by their fellow countrymen (183).
The book skillfully combines archival sources with personal memories, creating an engaging narrative for a broader readership. As the author shows, colonial courtroom dramas frequently involved people who had access to financial resources and knowledge (102). Therefore, the archival sources themselves introduce an additional theme: class. Personal memories, meanwhile, can be selective or evasive, especially during difficult periods such as wartime (172). Both have been handled with nuance, yet more subtleties could be pursued. I also find myself wishing for more information about Japo-Asian intimacies. The final two chapters suggest potentially rich ground, although we are only given a tantalizing glimpse.
InterAsian Intimacies provocatively untangles Burma’s race, religion, and gender relations over changing times through the lens of intermarriage, analyzing both public spheres and private memories. As Ikeya has elsewhere noted, “matters of intimacy” are indeed “matters of state”’ (“Colonial Intimacies in Comparative Perspective: Intermarriage, Law and Cultural Difference in British Burma,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 14, no. 1, 2013). Read alongside Sen Guo-Quan’s Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia (Cornell University Press, 2023), it becomes evident that the manipulation of public power is often exercised through private intervention.
Yi Li
Aberystwyth University, Wales