Yangon - A historical experiment

Insightful and stimulating accounts on the history of Yangon are rare. The fewest among us who work and live in this city therefore possess a clear idea of the peculiarity of its emergence and historical development.

Over the past few years the Paris-based historian Heinz Schütte has taken on the task of collecting and compiling the sparse literature and some of the difficult to access sources about the history of the city and shape it into a historical essay. He demonstrates how the small fishing village at the foot of the Shwedagon Pagoda, which is one of the holiest sites of the region and has for centuries been sought out by pilgrims from all over South-East Asia, developed into the colonial commercial metropolis of the British. He traces its development from the new capital of independent Burma, its decay under the military dictatorship, and explores its present rapid new beginning and almost unbridled transformation.

The first traces of the city take us to the timeless mythology and to the brothers Tephussa and Bhallika, two merchants who brought eight hairs of the Buddha from India back to Myanmar to preserve them in the marvelous shrine on the Singuttara Hill. Since the 16th century merchants from East and West met here. In 1755 king Alaungpaya from the North defeated the Mon of the South, thereby uniting for the third time the kingdom of the Bamar, and used Yangon as a centre of commerce with foreigners to secure his rule. In 1885 the British brought down the Burmese monarchy and built a marketplace beneath the golden pagoda as the colonial hub for the exploitation of the riches of the country. The result of this connection between religious significance and the worldly pursuit for power and profit is a city which has always been caught at the intersection between its two images.

We cordially invite you to the Savoy Hotel for a conversation with Heinz Schütte on the historical experiment of Yangon. The photographer Wolfgang Bellwinkel will also be present and show some of his Yangon-photographs from last year.