The Commonwealth of Empire

The Commonwealth of Empire explores the overlooked history of the Bawdwin mining complex in Burma’s Northern Shan States, focusing on its development during the British colonial period. Drawing on global and imperial history, author David Baillargeon showcases how industrial-scale mining transformed Bawdwin into a hub of commerce and migration, especially under the Burma Corporation in the early twentieth century. By the 1920s, Bawdwin had become one of the largest industrial sites in the world, staffed by a multinational workforce from South, Southeast, and East Asia, and managed by foreign engineers from the United States and Australia. Known as the “Commonwealth of Namtu” for its diverse workforce, the site exemplifies how colonial and corporate interests overlapped, and how such commercial spaces were shaped, contested, and reimagined locally. In telling the stories of the diverse agents and workers who developed the site and made it their home, The Commonwealth of Empire uncovers how and why a space like Bawdwin has been forgotten over time, interrogating its marginalization in national and regional histories and linking such forgetting to the nature of Britain’s colonial project.

Baillargeon argues that recovering such forgotten histories requires moving beyond nation-based frameworks and embracing methods that illuminate the global forces behind colonial enterprises. In doing so, the book offers opportunities to decolonize histories and spaces of occupation that fit uneasily into existing frameworks of empire and nation.