Myanmar: A timeline

c. 200 BCE – 1050 CE

The Pyu city-states

Long before Bagan, a network of walled cities — Sri Ksetra, Beikthano, Halin — flourished in the dry zone of upper Myanmar. The Pyu traded with India and China, wrote in a script related to Brahmi, and practised early Buddhism. Their cities were eventually absorbed as the Pagan kingdom expanded.

Burmese civilisation is not a single lineage. Mon, Pyu, Shan, Karen, Kachin, Rakhine, Chin and many other communities have shaped the region for more than two thousand years.

849 – 1287 CE

The Pagan (Bagan) Empire

King Anawrahta (r. 1044–1077) unified the Irrawaddy valley, defeated the Mon kingdom of Thaton, and established Theravada Buddhism as the spiritual centre of the new empire. Over the next two centuries his successors built the plains of Bagan into one of the great temple cities of the world — more than 10,000 stupas and pagodas, many still standing.

The empire fell in 1287 when Kublai Khan's forces invaded, but Bagan's religious and cultural inheritance shaped every Burmese kingdom that followed.

Bagan was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019.

1287 – 1531

Ava, Hanthawaddy, and the Shan migrations

After Bagan fell, power fragmented. The Ava kingdom held upper Myanmar; the Mon kingdom of Hanthawaddy (Pegu) held the south. Shan chiefs from the highlands settled the edges of the Irrawaddy valley and would later play a decisive role in Burmese politics for centuries.

1531 – 1752

The Toungoo Dynasty

Tabinshwehti and his son-in-law Bayinnaung built the largest empire in mainland Southeast Asia, stretching from Ayutthaya to Manipur. Bayinnaung (r. 1551–1581) is still remembered as one of the great conquerors of the region.

The empire did not survive him. It broke apart under his successors and was replaced by the Restored Toungoo and then the Konbaung.

1752 – 1885

The Konbaung Dynasty

Founded by Alaungpaya, the Konbaung dynasty reunified the country, repelled several Chinese invasions, and came into repeated conflict with the British East India Company as it expanded east from Bengal. The dynasty also fought — and lost — four wars with Siam.

Cultural life flourished in Mandalay, the new royal capital. The Konbaung kings left a dense record of laws, chronicles, and temple-building.

1824 – 1948

British Burma

Three Anglo-Burmese wars (1824–26, 1852, 1885) ended with the annexation of all of present-day Myanmar into British India. Rangoon (Yangon) became a major port, teak and rice were exported at enormous scale, and a large Indian — Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati — population migrated in to work the colonial economy.

Burmese education was restricted; monastic schools were curbed. The result was a deep, lasting resentment of colonial rule, and a layered society that has shaped every modern debate about identity and belonging.

During the Second World War, the Japanese occupied Burma (1942–45) and Aung San, later the independence leader, fought first with the Japanese, then switched to the Allies. The war was brutal everywhere; the Karen, Shan and other ethnic-minority regions were especially affected.

1948

Independence

On 4 January 1948, Burma became independent. Aung San had been assassinated six months earlier, along with most of his cabinet, by a political rival. U Nu, his colleague, became the first prime minister and tried to hold the new union together.

Almost immediately, the country was at war with itself. The Karen National Union, the Communist Party, and several other groups took up arms. The civil conflicts that began in 1948 have recurred in different forms ever since.

1962 – 1988

Ne Win and the "Burmese Way to Socialism"

General Ne Win seized power in a coup on 2 March 1962, sidelining the elected government. He nationalised industry, expelled Indian and Chinese business families, and pursued an isolationist, state-led economic policy called the Burmese Way to Socialism.

The economy collapsed. By the late 1980s, Burma was one of the poorest countries in Asia. Ethnically, the new constitution cancelled the federal commitments Aung San had made a decade earlier; ceasefire and counter-insurgency operations in the ethnic states drove massive displacement.

1988

The 8888 Uprising

In August 1988, mass protests erupted across the country as the economy cratered. Students, monks, and civil servants led demonstrations in Rangoon and other cities. The military responded with lethal force — estimates range from several hundred to several thousand deaths.

Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of the independence hero, returned to Burma to care for her dying mother and was drawn into the movement. The military staged another coup and annulled the election the NLD had won earlier that year.

1988 – 2010

State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC)

The junta renamed itself the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) in 1997. Under General Than Shwe, the regime drafted a new constitution in 2008, moved the capital to Naypyidaw, and oversaw a tightly managed transition to a "disciplined democracy" in 2010.

Aung San Suu Kyi spent most of this period under house arrest. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

2015 – 2021

The NLD years

The National League for Democracy won a landslide in 2015, with Aung San Suu Kyi becoming State Counsellor. The 2008 constitution — drafted by the military — reserved 25% of parliamentary seats for the army, which kept effective veto power over constitutional change.

The period was also marked by the 2017 military operation in Rakhine State, after which more than 700,000 Rohingya fled into Bangladesh. The UN described it as a textbook case of ethnic cleansing; Aung San Suu Kyi's defence of the military at The Hague drew widespread condemnation.

The NLD won again in 2020 by a wide margin. The military refused to accept the result.

2021 – present

The coup and the civil war

On 1 February 2021, the military (Tatmadaw) detained Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD leadership, declared a state of emergency, and seized power. The National Unity Government (NUG) and the People's Defence Forces (PDF) emerged in opposition; the Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs) that had been fighting for decades deepened their operations.

By 2024 the country was in a full-scale civil war. The Tatmadaw has lost control of large parts of the borderlands; the economy has contracted sharply; millions of people have been displaced. Migration to Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and further afield has accelerated.

This is the moment our contributors are living through. Where the timeline stops, the stories begin.