The Trouser People: A Story of Burma in the Shadow of the Empire

Marshall scoured Scott's unpublished diaries and other sources (all thankfully listed in a comprehensive bibliography) before embarking on four sparate trips. The most straightforward of these was a journey from Rangoon upriver to the old imperial capital of Mandalay and then into the some of the hinterlands. Another trip involved travlling through northern Thailand to the border, where ethnic Shan rebels are attempting to resist Burmese army genocide. A third trip took him from northern Thailand across the border and into the hills near the Laotian and Chinese border. And the most harrowing trip involved slipping across the Chinese border and into ethnic Wa territory where he searches for a legendary lake from which the Wa say they evolved from tadpoles. These trips are crisply related, intertwined with accounts of Scott's travels and life, and background history.

While Marshall certainly doesn't defend British colonialism, he does credit it for introducing modernity to the region and for creating a nation-allbeit juryrigged -from disparate tribes. Marshall lays Burma/Myanmar's current status as human rights disaster area and its herion-exporting based economy firmly at the feet of a military junta that seized power in 1962 and has held an iron grip on the country ever since. An iron grip that is assisted by ethnic Wa drug lords, whose operations rival that of their more famous Colombian counterparts. Burma/Myanmar's economy is wholy dependent on the exporting of illegal drugs by Wa drug lords in collusion with the military. Historically this has been heroin, but in recent years, mehtamphedamine and ecstacy production is said to rival the most sophisticated European operations, and the drug lords have branched out into music and software piracy. With the country's money and guns all linked together in such tidy self-perpetuating interests, it's difficult to see how the stanglehold will ever be broken short of outside intervention.


A wonderful and evocative book   July 5, 2002
 8 out of 8 found this review helpful

A great book about tragic events in a beautiful country. The author shadows the travels and travails of Victorian adventurer/administrator, George Scott. The result is a narrative that is readable and engrossing. Marshall presents a wealth of historical material in a relatively short volume (quite unlike the typical contemporary non-fiction book). He is at his weakest when he romanticizes Scott's relationship with the locals in Burma and skirts the excesses of colonial rule. He also neglects Scott's more patronizing and condescending writings about the people of Burma. On the other hand, Marshall presents a very readable account of comtemporary history in the country and a credible portarait of the current regime.

I have visited Burma in the past few years and Marshall's descriptions of people and places were quite evocative of what I saw. Hopefully, the same will be true for other readers, regardless of whether they have traveled there or not.


Riveting-A must read book about Burma   June 5, 2002
 15 out of 15 found this review helpful

THE TROUSER PEOPLE by Andrew Marshall is simply riveting! Wittily written and packed with historical facts, Marshall retraces the experiences and observations of Sir James George Scott ("Shway Yoe"), that irrepressibly insightful Briton who served his "Great Queen" (Victoria) in Burma in the 19th century, having first gone there as a school teacher and journalist. Posing as a tourist, Marshall, a journalist, made several forays into forbidden Burma to gather material for this tale. Ever under the scrutiny, and never escaping the suspicion of the military junta for being anything but a tourist, he fooled them all. The result is this tragic commentary of Burma which has been under the military boot since 1962.

Marshall's trek from China's Yunnan province to find the legendary Nawng Hkeo lake in the War hills was indeed a hair-raising experience. The Wa tribe, whose domain straddle the Burma-China border, were, until 1970s, ferocious head hunters. Legend has it that they descended from a tadpole who resided in Lake Nawng Hkeo, which stands hidden in the mist on a ridge 7,300 feet high. The Wa have now substituted head hunting with growing opium and manufacturing methamphetamines.

The traditionally longyi (sarong)-wearing Burmese derisively called their colonial oppressors "the trouser people." It seems that nothing has changed in the hundred years since the Brits first set foot on Burmese soil over a century ago. They are now oppressed by rulers of their own kind, the generals, who also wear trousers, but who are also beneficiaries of epithets far more colorful.

Marshall perceptively concludes that the British raj and the present day Burmese generals both share the conviction that they alone know what is best for the country.

U Kyaw Win
Boulder, Colorado


Travel, journalism and history meet and - they rock!   April 30, 2002
 2 out of 2 found this review helpful

This is really very good indeed. I read a lot of travelogue-meets-history and generally come away pretty dissatisfied. It's not easy for a journalistic writer to merge an account of personal adventuring with controversial historical analysis and not end up annoying the reader. But there's never any doubt that Marshall succeeds - the intrepid stuff is as lightly done as the scholarship and he - as any expedition leader must - wins the reader's trust at the first hazard (in this case the smuggling of himself over the Thai border to a rebel camp in the damp and dangerous Karen highlands).

It's quite a feat. The difficulties of the territory are not just geographic; Marshall takes on the evils of modern Burma under the Generals and the peculiar pleasures of British late-period colonialism and dares to draw the links - hardly uncontentious. But he convinces, and provides a lot of entertainment, too.

He has some great characters. George Scott, the Victorian conqueror of Upper Burma (sometimes by football), is a treasure of eccentric fun from an age that usually churned out bullies and bores to run the British colonies. The modern Burmese Marshall meets and travels with are vivid people whose endless sad story is at the centre of the book - when so often the Natives in this sort of writing end up being merely the author's supporting cast. And Marshall, as character in his own book, wandering with cheeky inquisitiveness through the Burmese generals' land of horrors, is witty, self-deprecating and never boasts about being brave at all.

Best of its kind since Redmond O'Hanlon.


Travel, journalism and history meet and - they rock!   April 30, 2002
 5 out of 5 found this review helpful

This is really very good indeed. I read a lot of travelogue-meets-history and generally come away pretty dissatisfied. It's not easy for a journalistic writer to merge an account of personal adventuring with controversial historical analysis and not end up annoying the reader. But there's never any doubt that Marshall succeeds - the intrepid stuff is as lightly done as the scholarship and he - as any expedition leader must - wins the reader's trust at the first hazard (in this case the smuggling of himself over the Thai border to a rebel camp in the damp and dangerous Karen highlands).

It's quite a feat. The difficulties of the territory are not just geographic; Marshall takes on the evils of modern Burma under the Generals and the peculiar pleasures of British late-period colonialism and dares to draw the links - hardly uncontentious. But he convinces, and provides a lot of entertainment, too.

He has some great characters. George Scott, the Victorian conqueror of Upper Burma (sometimes by football), is a treasure of eccentric fun from an age that usually churned out bullies and bores to run the British colonies. The modern Burmese Marshall meets and travels with are vivid people whose endless sad story is at the centre of the book - when so often the Natives in this sort of writing end up being merely the author's supporting cast. And Marshall, as character in his own book, wandering with cheeky inquisitiveness through the Burmese generals' land of horrors, is witty, self-deprecating and never boasts about being brave at all.

Best of its kind since Redmond O'Hanlon.