The Trouser People

The quintessential colonial book on Burma is The Burman: His Life and Notions by Shwe Yoe a nom-de-plume of Sir George Scott a British colonialist in Burma. That book was written in 1894 and remains a standard source for understanding the Burmese people of the late 19th century (you can read it for free here). Of course, since Scott was British, albeit one who could speak several languages of Burma, we'll never really know what life in Burma was like, but you get what you get ...

The Trouser People: A Story of Burma In the Shadow of the Empire by Andrew Marshall follows the travels of George Scott in Burma. The book is interesting partly because his writing is interesting and full of humor, partly because he goes where no one else goes (the Wa State), but mostly because it is shocking that opium is being grown and drugs manufactured in the Shan and Wa States with impunity. The junta is known to be cynical (and more than a little crazy) but such large scale abdication of their responsibility is horrendous. The casual visitor to Burma, me on more than one occasion, sees a poor country with a despotic government, hears a few stories of the Karen being "cleansed," mostly from journalists who cannot visit Burma, sees evidence of forced labor in road-building projects, but the scale of the criminal enterprise that passes for government in that country is well hidden.