Metamorphosis: The Rice Boom, Environmental Transformation, and the Problem of Truncation in Colonial Lower Burma, 1850–1940

PETER A. COCLANIS is Albert R. Newsome Distinguished Professor of History and Director of the Global Research Institute at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Earlier versions of this essay were presented at Boston University, Duke University, and Mississippi State University. The author would like to thank Louis Ferleger, Prasenjit Duara, Alan Marcus, and Jim Giesen for organizing the talks, and the audiences at these institutions for many helpful suggestions. The author would also like to thank Michael Montesano, the three anonymous reviewers for Agricultural History, and editor Bert Way for excellent criticism and editorial guidance.