In conducting initial field work in Myanmar between 2007 and 2011 for the dissertation on which this book is based, I was struck by the fact that I encountered very few people who were at all familiar with the textual tradition that has formed the basis for a large part of my analysis. This was true with regard to the Buddhist texts and commentaries that I have analyzed, but also true of more mundane sources such as articles and speeches from political figures in Myanmar's history. While in any culture the formal texts of political philosophy are probably not widely read beyond a small scholarly community, people in Myanmar have been particularly disconnected from most of their recent political and intellectual history.

The disastrous education policies and restrictions on speech and the press that former military regimes enacted are in large part to blame for this lack of connection. Very few of the non-scholars I interviewed for this book had read the work of the thinkers who figure prominently in it, simply because most of the writings that make up the intellectual tradition of Burmese Buddhist political thought have been virtually unavailable in Myanmar since the military coup in 1962. Among younger generations (those who were young children or not yet born in 1988), individuals such as U Hpo Hlaing and Thakin Kodaw Hmaing are little more than vague historical figures. Even the works of General Aung San, the hero of Burmese independence, had been tucked away in used bookshops as the former military regime disassociated from him in an attempt to counter Aung San Suu Kyi's claims to his political heritage. One veteran student activist from the 1988 protests who fled to Thailand related to me the revelatory experience of reading a book of Aung San's political writings given to him by a Western researcher. Most of the Burmese university faculty who participated in a political science curriculum development seminar I conducted in 2014 had read biographies of Aung San but had never read anything he had written. They were shocked when I suggested that his writings and speeches, along with those of U Nu and Aung San Suu Kyi (not to mention lesser-known but still insightful figures), could be read as examples of political thought.