Reviewed by Lynley Capon
Recently, I’ve read several books about Burma. I started them before the horrific crackdown on public protests there. Considering what happened, my reading turned timely.
I knew little about Burma and its tumultuous past before venturing into Andrew Marshall’s The Trouser People (2003, Penguin Books, 307 pages). The title reflects what the sarong-wearing people of Burma called the invading British.
Marshall, a Scot, made several forays into Burma, retracing the journeys and researching the diaries of his countryman, Sir J. George Scott. The latter brought huge tracts of Burma, with its innumerable tribes and ethnic groups, into Queen Victoria’s sprawling British Empire.
Marshall took risks in visiting places deemed “off-limits” to the Burmese, let alone to white foreigners. Along the way, he produced a tale well worth reading.
While following Scott’s trails and recounting events that happened more than a century ago, Marshall also tells of the modern situation (2002 at the time of writing), and it makes for grim reading. He points out that Burma’s military regime is guilty of genocide, the systematic killing of whole ethnic groups.
Marshall’s style is gripping, descriptive and witty. At some points, I laughed out loud. At others, I cried. He tells of the British imperialist-conqueror activities in the late 1800s, but also of the present parallels.
“Fast forward 100 years. Burma was no longer a British colony, but a military dictatorship – one of the world’s most brutal and enduring. Scott’s tribal stamping grounds had been ravaged by the Burmese army, and the country whose borders he helped to map was now delineated by misery.”
And “Burma had won its independence in 1948, but its generals behaved as if the Brits had left only last Tuesday. The military’s disastrous rule had led a prosperous, fledging democracy into misery and ruin. Yet according to their bilious propaganda, all the nation’s modern woes – poverty, AIDS, the booming narcotics trade – were the ‘pernicious legacies’ of the Empire that Scott had helped to build.”
Marshall exposes the modern junta’s cruelty and duplicity. For example, the Burmese authorities testify to the reduction of opium production and drug abuse while forging deals with drug lords who prosper incredibly and pay the junta so that both sides continue to thrive undisturbed. Marshall estimates that 60 per cent of Burma’s GDP comes from drug trafficking, with Europe and the US as primary heroin recipients.
The junta is responsible for displacing hundreds of thousands of villagers, raping the women and burning the dwellings. Marshall mentions a 1990 protest by monks, who were shot at by the military, just as happened a few weeks ago. In Burma, history repeats itself with distressing regularity.
The Trouser People qualifies as a “must read”. It’s entertaining, enthralling, eye-opening and relevant to the latest brutality in a troubled land.
Approval rating: 85 per cent.
(October 26, 2007)
Coming Next: Lynley Capon reviews The Burma Road by Donovan Webster.
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