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

Andrew Marshall (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 5, 2002

An unforgettable adventure story of two journeys, one hundred years apart, into the untraveled heart of Burma.

Part travelogue, part history, part reportage, The Trouser People is an enormously appealing and vivid account of Sir George Scott, the unsung Victorian adventurer who hacked, bullied, and charmed his way through uncharted jungle to help establish British colonial rule in Burma. Born in Scotland in 1851, Scott was a die-hard imperialist with a fondness for gargantuan pith helmets and a bluffness of expression that bordered on the Pythonesque. But, as Andrew Marshall discovered, he was also a writer and photographer of rare sensibility. He spent a lifetime documenting the tribes who lived in Burma's vast wilderness and is the author of The Burman, published in 1882 and still in print today. He also not only mapped the lawless frontiers of this "geographical nowhere"-the British Empire's easternmost land border with China-but he widened the imperial goalposts in another way: he introduced soccer to Burma, where today it is a national obsession. Inspired by Scott's unpublished diaries, Andrew Marshall retraces the explorer's intrepid footsteps from the moldering colonial splendor of Rangoon to the fabled royal capital of Mandalay. In the process he discovers modern Burma, a hermit nation misruled by a brutal military dictatorship, its soldiers, like the British colonialists before them, nicknamed "the trouser people" by the country's sarong-wearing civilians. Wonderfully observed, mordantly funny, and skillfully recounted, The Trouser People is an offbeat and thrilling journey through Britain's lost heritage-and a powerful exposé of Burma's modern tragedy.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In The Trouser People, Andrew Marshall recounts his ambitious crisscrossing of contemporary Burma, which emerges as isolated, heartbreaking, fitfully resilient, and, to Western eyes, certainly, often exotically unfathomable. Marshall's compass is the life of a now-obscure Victorian adventurer, Sir George Scott. He draws distinct parallels between British imperialism and Burma's crushing, present-day military dictatorship. But The Trouser People is less analysis than witty, candid travelogue, highlighted by excursions into the remote territory of some of the country's many ethnic minorities. Most fascinating among these are the Wa, former headhunters who now control much of Burma's drug trade. Through their territory Marshall tramps in search of a mysterious lake, whose waters, Wa myth has it, were their birthplace.

This muscular, anecdotal narrative, by centering on individuals and the quotidian complexities of Burmese life, washes a country too often capsulized in black and white into bright color. --H. O'Billovitch

From Publishers Weekly

Beginning with an unusual Burmese monk who keeps a cell phone in his robes and negotiates with Thai border police regarding arms smuggled to the insurgent army fighting Burma's military regime, Marshall recounts his adventures in Burma over a five-year period, inspired by the diaries of late-19th-century Scottish adventurer Sir George Scott (The Burman). Scott furthered the interests of the British colonials (aka the trouser people) by mapping and photographing remote areas of Burma. As Marshall, chief Asian correspondent for British Esquire and coauthor of The Cult at the End of the World, follows in Scott's footsteps, he provides an informed history and his own observations of a country where most people "have never known true peace or true freedom." Burma is ruled by a brutal military dictatorship, and its democracy movement is symbolized by the house arrest in Rangoon of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi. Marshall retraces Scott's steps from Rangoon to Mandalay in 1880, when the despotic rule of King Thibaw, a reign that mirrors current political conditions, was coming to an end. All of the author's adventures will hold readers' interest, but his difficult journeys to tribal villages of the Shan Plateau, through drug-trafficking territory where head-hunting only ended in the 1970s, are particularly enthralling. Although Marshall's sardonic humor may not appeal to all, this is a valuable firsthand look at areas and living conditions in a country relatively unknown in the West. Avid readers of travel literature will love it.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint Press; First edition (March 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582431205
• ISBN-13: 978-1582431208
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,891,261 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #75 in Books > Travel > Asia > Myanmar

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Customer Reviews

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting-A must read book about Burma, June 5, 2002

By 

U Kyaw Win (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Trouser People: A Story of Burma in the Shadow of the Empire (Hardcover)

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

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb book, with a glitch, January 12, 2003

By 

G. B. Talovich (Wulai, Taiwan, ROC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Trouser People: A Story of Burma in the Shadow of the Empire (Hardcover)

This is not an even-handed scholarly study of Burma -- thank goodness. It moves along just like a journey, in fits and starts, pausing here, rushing there.

Focusing on Sir George Scott, British Empire-builder of a hundred years ago, Marshall paints a vivid picture of Burma today. His writing is extraordinarily full of life, leading the reader from sympathy to outrage, from suspense to laughter. This is not a book you want to give to someone recuperating from surgery: Marshall is one of the funniest writers I have ever read, and would play havoc on surgical stitches.

One point I would like to debate: his discussion of the Kayan/Padaung families working for the Hupin Hotel in Yawnghwe/Nyaungshwe. I know the family that runs the Hupin personally -- several branches of the clan, actually, and count several of the staff among my friends. Yes, they are not running the hotel for their health, and yes, they are making a profit, but in all sincerity, I do not think their dealings with the Kayan are as heartless as Marshall depicts.

There are two families of Kayan by Inle Lake. Marshall met the ones hired by the Hupin, not those moved in by the government. The Hupin went into the mountains and made a deal with the family: they would build a house for them, give the men jobs in factories around Yawnghwe, the women would work for the hotel, and the kids would go to school at Hupin's expense. They are paid monthly salaries and medical expenses, and any weddings and what-not are paid for by the Hupin. Some of the children have reached high school, and are still going strong. Few children in the countryside get so much schooling. One little girl envied all the attention her big sister got from tourists because of the rings on her neck. The little girl raised such a fuss that her parents agreed to let her have rings on her neck, even though she had not reached the traditional age for that. BTW: she refuses to go to school.

The price for a photo with the Padaung is US$3: this is split 3 ways, between the guide, the hotel, and the Padaung (US$1 is a good day's wage for someone working in Yangon, a week's salary for the countryside.) The Padaung are free to go back to Kayah state. When they go, they bring handicrafts back to the hotel, which they sell to tourists; this money goes into their own pockets. My friends from the Hupin asked the Kayan to lower the price of the bracelets I was buying, and let me tell you, it was a struggle! These are not listless zombies meekly obeying a master's wishes.

Marshall describes a concrete compound. I am not sure what he is talking about, unless it is the area outside their compound, beyond the bamboo bridge. Their wooden house was built Kayan style, in accordance with their specific wishes. They are an extremely conservative tribe. Marshall makes much of the women not leaving their compound. The Padaung are shy people, and the women do not speak Burmese, so they are not willing to range far. Also, I have heard from separate, unrelated sources that there is a danger for Padaung women to roam, because there have been cases of their being -- not exactly kidnapped, but taken off for show in Europe.

Marshall says "the hotel staff member broke into a practiced spiel." We may not be talking about the same man, I did not speak English with the Padaung man I went with, but I suspect the "practiced spiel" may be memorized word for word by someone who speaks minimal English, and may not have confidence in leaving the beaten path.

I deeply feel that the Hupin is more than fair in its dealings with its staff, whether they be Burman, Shan, Chinese, Kayan, or others. When I told the Hupin family what Marshall had written about them, they were quite hurt. Frankly, they are making enough money from tourists, they do not feel the need to exploit the workers. Marshall went to Burma expecting to see the disadvantaged being exploited, so when he saw the disadvantaged, he assumed they must be getting exploited. In the case of the Hupin, I can vouch that he was wrong.

All in all, though, this is an excellent picture of Burma, including parts most of us will never see. I hope Marshall is hard at work on his next book. This is an author to keep an eye on.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Sad Case of Burma, July 30, 2002

By 

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Trouser People: A Story of Burma in the Shadow of the Empire (Hardcover)

Let's get one thing clear from the begining, if you're looking for a comprehensive history of Burma/Myanmar with analysis on how it has become one of the most repressive nations in the world, this is not your book. Rather, Marshall's book is a sometimes witty, sometimes heartbreaking "in the footsteps of" style travelogue, in which he manages to travel around modern Burma/Myanmar, following the path of an obscure Victorian adventurer/explorer (and fellow Scotsman) who laid the groundwork for British colonial rule. The core theme is that in Scott's day, Burma was a little known area unpenetrated by the West and populated by a diverse assortment of tribes with varrying degrees of hostility-and some 125 years later Burma/Myanmar remains that way in many ways.

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.