Short-listed for the 2003 Thomas
Cook Travel Book Award is an unforgettable
adventure story of two journeys, one
hundred years apart, into the untravelled
heart of Burma.
Part travelog, 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 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Inspired by Scott's unpublished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, Marshall retraced the explorer's
intrepid footsteps from the moldering
colonial splendor of Rangoon to the
fabled royal capital of Mandalay.
In the process he discovered 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, this
is an offbeat and thrilling journey
through Britain's lost heritage-and
a powerful exposé of Burma's
modern tragedy.
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