Panglong Conference

The Panglong Conference (Burmese: ပင်လုံစာချုပ်), held in February 1947, was an historic meeting that took place at Panglong in the Shan States in Burma between the Shan, Kachin and Chin ethnic minority leaders and Aung San, head of the interim Burmese government. Aung Zan Wai, Pe Khin, Bo Hmu Aung, Sir Maung Gyi, Dr. Sein Mya Maung and Myoma U Than Kywe were among the negotiators of the historical Panglong Conference negotiated with Bamar representative General Aung San and other ethnic leaders in 1947. All these leaders unanimously decided to join the Union of Burma. On the agenda was the united struggle for independence from Britain and the future of Burma after independence as a unified republic.

Burma has been called an anthropologist's paradise. Various groups of people migrated south into the Irrawaddy- Chindwin, Sittang and Salween valleys from the China-Tibet region in the latter part of the first millennium, the Mon followed by the Tibeto-Burman and Tai - Shan races. The main groups were the Mon, Bamar, Shan and Rakhine, establishing their own kingdoms, and the first three groups vying for supremacy. The Bamar under Anawrahta in the 11th century, Bayinnaung in the 16th century, and Alaungpaya in the 18th century unified and expanded their kingdoms establishing the first, second and third Burmese Empires respectively, whilst the Shan were ascendent during the 14th and the 15th centuries. The ancient Mon kingdom in the south was finally overwhelmed by the Bamar into submission only in the mid-18th century, and the Arakan annexed subsequently, establishing a Bamar-dominant nation state approximately within its current boundaries. Although the Arakan and Monlands were under Bamar administration, the Shanlands and the Trans-Salween states of the Karen and Karenni were never under direct control but only under Burmese suzerainty.

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