Skip to content

Trace the Roots

Government & LawWorld Wars and the Atom

Ne Win seizes power in Burma

1962

General Ne Win overthrows the civilian government of U Nu in a bloodless coup. He imposes the Burmese Way to Socialism and closes the country to the world.

Longest chain: The Big Bang → First atomic nuclei form → First stars ignite → First galaxies assemble → Milky Way takes shape → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Ediacaran biota → Cloudina, first shells and first predators → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Lobe-finned fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → Synapsids, the mammal line, split from reptiles → Therapsids, ancestors of mammals → Cynodonts, the ancestors of mammals → First mammals → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → First anthropoid primates → Apes split from monkeys → Great apes split from gibbons → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → Habitual fire and cooking → Homo sapiens appears → Complex language → Natufian villages → Oldest known bread → Agriculture begins → Irrigation → Uruk and the first cities → Cylinder seals → Writing (cuneiform) → Egyptian hieroglyphs → The alphabet → Phoenician alphabet → Greek alphabet → Solon's reforms → Athenian democracy → Trial and death of Socrates → Plato's Academy → Aristotle's Lyceum → Alexander's conquests → Death of Alexander and the Hellenistic kingdoms → Seleucid Empire founded → Parthian Empire founded → Sasanian Empire → Birth of Muhammad → Muhammad's first revelations → The Hijra → Conquest of Mecca → Death of Muhammad and the Rashidun caliphate → Arab conquests → Abbasid Caliphate → Battle of Talas → Paper reaches the Islamic world → House of Wisdom → Al-Khwarizmi and algebra → Fibonacci's Liber Abaci → Bills of exchange → Medici Bank → Double-entry bookkeeping → Muscovy Company → English East India Company → Seven Years' War → Stamp Act → Boston Tea Party → American Revolution → Declaration of Independence → Articles of Confederation ratified → Shays' Rebellion → U.S. Constitution → Louisiana Purchase → Austin's colony in Mexican Texas → Texas Revolution → United States annexes Texas → Mexican-American War → Compromise of 1850 → Kansas-Nebraska Act → Lincoln elected president → Fort Sumter → U.S. Civil War → National Banking Act → Federal Reserve → Great Depression → Nazis take power → Munich Agreement → Nazi-Soviet Pact → Invasion of Poland → World War II → Independence and partition of India → Burma becomes independent → Ne Win seizes power in Burma

The story

On 2 March 1962 General Ne Win and the Burmese army took power in a coup, arresting Prime Minister U Nu and his ministers. Ne Win set up a Revolutionary Council and declared the Burmese Way to Socialism. The military nationalized banks, trade and industry, closed foreign schools and newspapers, and pushed out many residents of Indian descent. On 7 July 1962 soldiers fired on student protesters in Rangoon, and the next day the army blew up the student union building.

Burma had been independent since 1948 and struggled with Karen, Shan, Kachin and communist rebellions. Ne Win argued that Shan demands for a looser federation threatened the union and that the army had to protect it. The economy declined as state enterprises failed and black markets spread. A single party, the Burma Socialist Programme Party, ruled from 1974, and Ne Win dominated politics until 1988. The country that was once the world's largest rice exporter became one of Asia's poorest, and military rule lasted in various forms for about half a century.

Why it mattered

Military rule began and lasted in various forms until the 2010s.
Burma's economy declined from one of the region's richest to one of its poorest.
The war with ethnic armed groups continued, as federal demands were met with force.
The anger it created led to the 1988 uprising.

Sources

Revolutionary Council of the Union of Burma Britannica
Myanmar: Since independence Britannica
U Nu Britannica
Myanmar: Withdrawal of Currency Notes in 1987 Global Voices

Drafted by AI (Claude) from the sources above and checked against them by AI; no historian has reviewed this page. Spot a mistake? Suggest a correction. How pages are made

Community notes

Loading notes…

Learn more ranked by votes

BookRobert H. Taylor

Editor's pick

BookThant Myint-U

The River of Lost Footsteps

Editor's pick

VideoSearch on YouTube

Ne Win 1962 Burma coup documentary

Editor's pick