Ian Brown is Professor of the Economic History of South East Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. He is the author of Economic Change in South-East Asia, c.1830-1980, and he has also published extensively on the economy of Siam in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and on the impact of the world depression of the 1930s on the economies of South East Asia. He is currently working on a history of the prison in colonial Burma.

• Prologue: Finding the question 1. The Long View: Growth and weakness in Burma's rice economy 2. The Course of the Depression Crisis 3. Credit Contraction and Foreclosure 4. Survival Strategies and Material Circumstances 5. The Economic Foundations of Rebellion Epilogue: Memory and perspective Bibliography

'This slender book is wonderfully crafted. It is the work of a mature economic historian reflecting on the consequences of one of the major economic events of the 20th century., the great depression of the 1930's, and the implications of that event for the behaviour of the rice-growing peasant population primarily residing in the delta of the Irrawaddy River.' -Asian Affairs, Nov 2006