Shan State in Burma today has its capital at Taunggyi. Administratively, there is a Northern and Southern Shan State with their capitals at Lashio and Taunggyi respectively. At the time of the Tai Mao kingdom around the twelfth century, there were nine Shan principalities or states, seven of which are in present-day Burma. Although the British were in the Shan area by the late 1800s it was only in 1922 that they grouped the Shan principalities into the Federated Shan States.

Shan State has generally been out of bounds to foreign visitors since the military coup of 1962. The few places open include Taunggyi and the Inle Lake of Yawnghwe. Given the situation where accounts of Shan State politics are sensationalized with reports of opium wars, narcotics armies, drug trafficking, warlords and opium kings, and given the current paucity of knowledge regarding socio-economic, political, and historical realities, I felt despite feelings of inadequacy, that I should try to fill the information gap with respect to not only the Shan, but the politics of Burma as well. I am not a scholar.

My problem was compounded in that books dealing directly with the Shan and their homeland are few. Moreover, except for Chao Saimong Mangrai's The Shan State and British Annexation (1965), none deal with politics. Of course, all histories of Burma by such distinguished historians as Hall (1955), Harvey (1925), Christian (1945), Tinker (1967), Htin Aung (1967), Maung Maung Pye (1951), Trager (1966), Silverstein (1977), and Steinberg (1982) do contain references to the Shan and Shan States. However, in the parts dealing with post-1948 Burma, one is able to perceive, it seems, the reluctance of these scholars to dig too deeply into areas which would offend the powers that be in Rangoon. In reading some of these works on Burma, one can almost imagine these otherwise scholarly writers muttering curses against the non-Burmese, especially the Shan Chaofa (or Sawbwa, in Burmese) for surly opposition to Burmese leaders nobly engaged in the task of nation-building.