Institute of Development Studies | bulletin.ids.ac.uk authoritarianism and armed political orders, including the role of the military and the country’s rebel groups, also known as ethnic armed organisations (EAOs). Contrary to an oft-heard narrative, Myanmar was not a relatively prosperous and stable nation at the time of independence from British colonial rule in 1948. In fact, the country laid in ruins after the Second World War and experienced significant tensions between its different ethnic groups. At the eve of independence, Myanmar indeed descended into what was to become one of the world’s longest-running civil wars between ethnic minorities seeking greater autonomy or outright secession from Myanmar’s ethnocratic central state. Contemporary fragility, conflict, and violence are rooted in this incomplete and crisis-ridden process of state formation. Key to understanding persisting conflict and authoritarianism in Myanmar is the divide between the country’s centre and its borderlands, which dates back to precolonial times. Despite complex interdependencies, both regions have developed distinct political orders throughout the country’s history. Since the Bamar people established the Bagan Kingdom in 1044, various dynasties have ruled in the valleys of the Irrawaddy River basin, the heartland of what is nowadays known as Myanmar (or Burma). Similar to Southeast Asian kingdoms, the Myanmar polity has never fully extended its territorial reach into the far-flung and inaccessible mountains and forests on its fringes. Its frontiers have instead been home to a dazzling array of ethnic groups, including communities that today identify as Kachin, Shan, Chin, and Karen. Located far from the gravity of power, these communities have long governed themselves with overlapping and fluid systems of local authority (Scott 2009). British colonial rule cemented the difference between Myanmar’s population groups by ruling the Bamar-dominated centre of British Burma as ‘Burma Proper’ and the ethnic minority-dominated border areas as ‘Frontier Burma’ (Smith 1999: 40). Differential treatment of differently classified population groups contributed to the emergence of multiple ethno-nationalisms in Myanmar’s borderlands that soon stood in direct competition with growing Bamar nationalism in the country’s centre (Taylor 1982: 8). Preferential recruitment of ethnic minorities into the colonial armed service was the most important factor driving this development. This pitched the country’s population groups directly against each other as ethnic minority soldiers were deployed to suppress the growing dissent among Myanmar’s ethnic Bamar majority and its increasing aspiration to independence. The Second World War deepened this divide. While Bamar nationalists allied with Japanese forces invading British Burma in an attempt to rid themselves of colonial rule, many minorities allied with the British and their allies against the Japanese (Brenner 2019: 32–7). Majoritarian nationalism in ‘Burma Proper’ did, thus, not only develop in opposition to British colonial rule but also in opposition to the country’s ethnic minorities (Walton 2013: 8). IDS Bulletin Vol. 50 No. 3 September 2019 ‘Accountability Amidst Fragility, Conflict, and Violence: Learning from Recent Cases’ 17–36 | 19