[redspear]

Hi! I hope the vagueness of the title of my thread is not scaring people away, as I desperately need the counseling of some fellow historians/ international relations students.

I'm writing my dissertation about post colonial relations between Burma and Britain. Now, I need to demarcate a relevant period of British foreign policy, to establish whether a certain character can be assigned to it.

My question is, how far back do I go? Some people have told me no more than five years, but why specifically 5? And wouldn't it make more sense to go as far back as , say, when Cameron got elected (but then maybe it would be a onesided view as I'm consciously focusing on a coalition government), or even as far back as the '90's , when Burma's democratic transition became more realistic (but maybe this is indeed too far back in history)?

Hoping anyone's got any (well-founded) advice, and anyway, thanks for reading!!

[AdvanceAndVanquish]

Your choice will depend on whether you want to go in a primarily history or IR direction. If you're writing a historical dissertation, there's no reason why you couldn't go as far back as 1948, taking a particular slice to look at.

[The Gentle Giant]

A dissertation should be a very personal thing. Only you know what you want to write about, and if you care enough for it (and put the work in) then you will do fine either way.

That said, I would go back far enough to ensure that any freedom of infomation requests are likely to be granted, and the issue should always be that you have too much to fit into a small work than vice versa. But again, do what you are passionate about.

[evantej]

(Original post by redspear)
[...] I'm writing my dissertation about post colonial relations between Burma and Britain. Now, I need to demarcate a relevant period of British foreign policy, to establish whether a certain character can be assigned to it.

My question is, how far back do I go? Some people have told me no more than five years, but why specifically 5? And wouldn't it make more sense to go as far back as , say, when Cameron got elected (but then maybe it would be a onesided view as I'm consciously focusing on a coalition government), or even as far back as the '90's , when Burma's democratic transition became more realistic (but maybe this is indeed too far back in history)? [...]

I am neither a historian nor an international relations student, but one of the problems with all undergraduate dissertations is scope (i.e. topics are often too broad for the word length).

So far as demarcating a time period, I think you should pick thematically. I would not focus upon the current coalition government for a number of reasons.

I would pick one of the following periods: 1979–1997 or 1997-2010. By picking one of these you essentially remove the issue of scope since you are focusing upon something thematic (i.e. a particular government's foreign policy towards 'Burma'). In addition, there is more than enough variety within the separate time periods to discuss how this policy might change (i.e. is Gordon Brown's policy more or less Labour than Tony Blair's? Does party policy have any significant influence upon foreign policy?). Of course, you can tend to go outside these defined lines too. For instance, you could considers whether or not Blair's stance towards 'Burma' changed from when he was in opposition to when he was in government.