THIS weekend I’m staying at the Strand Hotel in Yangon, Myanmar, a classic British colonial hotel (1901) once connected with Raffles in Singapore. Dark wood, cream walls, stone trim, a gentle staff. Restored but not Dorchestered.

When it was built, this was Rangoon, Burma. Here in the oldest part the British city, right on the river, you get an idea of what it was like 100 years ago when their empire was heading toward its zenith and the port was one of the biggest in Southern Asia.

The hotel is on Strand Road, and the grid of streets around it, superimposed on the ancient city, are lined with colonial buildings, most in a terrible state of repair. A block north on Merchant Road, I saw a big crumbling blue building with corner turrets that I found out had been the tax office. Walking up Bo Ang Kyaw Street (formerly Sparks Street) I came to the giant Secretariat (1902), the colony’s administrative complex, occupying a large city block. It was the site of the first parliament where Aung San, father of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, was assassinated in 1947.

The place looks like it has been abandoned for decades, although the Myanmar government used it until 2005 when they moved to the Brazilia-like new city of Naypyidaw. Windows are smashed and roofs are off, a result, locals say, by the horrible cyclone Nargis in 2008. But the decay looks older.

Unlike India or Australia, Burma never joined the commonwealth, and after the war the government wanted nothing to do with Britain. Aung San himself led Burmese forces against Britain on the side of the Japanese at the beginning of the Second World War. Later he switched back, but there was no more trust on either side. Imperial institutions, like the courts, were discarded. The Indians who did much of the work of the Brits in the area and comprised half the population of Rangoon, are gone. Many died or fled in the war; the last of them kicked out in the 60s, along with other “aliens.” Compared to Singapore or Hong Kong, there is a tiny English-speaking expat community here, mostly Australians or Americans.

Even the name of the country was changed after a second military coup, and Myanmar was famously sealed by the generals. But now they are opening up again. The government has become civilian, and there are 10 new newspapers printing surprisingly critical news and opinion.

The only legacy of British Burma are dozens of stout architectural monuments. Some have been listed as landmarks, and there is talk of redevelopment. The Yangon Heritage Trust, led by U Thant’s grandson, Thant Myint-U, has been pushing hard to save the architecture.

There is no place in Asia with so many colonial buildings. Singapore, Hong Kong and Delhi are modern cities where the occasional restored colonial relics look like Disney confections. Havana is the one place I’ve been that’s like Yangon. A great number of Spanish colonial official buildings, offices, villas and palacios in the history center of town are still standing, not so much restored as maintained. And while paint may be scarce on the big houses in Vedado, beautiful gardens make up for it.

Driving around Yangon’s Bogyoke (formerly Dalhousie) Park, you see gardens and gracious mansions (like the comfortable homes in Havana’s Miramar district). You get a good sense of what it must have been like to live here, with money, when foreigners were in charge.

Both Yangon and Havana have been preserved for the wrong, same reason. With the economic and cultural isolation of the last 50 years, there simply has been no investment. Until now. As Myanmar and Cuba begin to rejoin the rest of the world and allow private development and capitalism in the style of China, these places may yet be lost. There is no popular love for them. No nostalgia for the colonial days. But there is feeling that they are part of Myanmar culture now, and it would be shame to lose them.

I’m left meditating on the folly of empires. It seems that all the money and all of the power are dispersed sooner or later. Whatever you think of the American empire, you can be sure it will end.

We forget, for example, that Britain itself was once a colony. Like Spain, it was part of the Roman Empire. Roman culture has survived, eventually encompassing all of Latin America. Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Catalonian, Romanian, etc. are basically Latin.

Roman imperialists understood that culture and religion are the keys to conquest, and must be adapted locally. Latin culture out-lived the empire. St. George, a Roman officer and an early martyr in Church of Rome, became the patron of England a thousand years after this death.

The Spanish learned the lesson, and in Mexico built a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe where they had had torn down the temple for Tonantzin, the Aztec earth goddess. The the style of the building was Baroque. Maybe not Roman, but assuredly Latin.

Language, architecture, alphabet, and religion survive. But Roman politics? Nothing is left. And so it is with the American Superpower and its Pacific Tilt. Like all of us, it will inevitably die. What may live on: The soft imperialism of American pop culture. Youth culture. Hollywood. Rock and roll. And the American Dream.

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Some links

The Secretariat on Google Maps

The Yangon Heritage Trust