Blood and Spirit: Reading beyond Orwell for a glimpse of British Burma

Blood and Spirit: Reading beyond Orwell for a glimpse of British Burma

By Amaury Lorin   |   Monday, 30 December 2013

Upon arrival in Myanmar, most foreigners with a taste for literature turn first to George Orwell's bestselling 1934 novel Burmese Days. It's a dark portrait of a British teak merchant losing his humanity in 1920s Imperial Burma.

Maurice Collis (right) in 1932 in Myeik (Tenasserim) with a Balloonist and the Superintendent of Police. Photo: Supplied.

Some of the best writing on British Burma, however, comes from a lesser-known but prolific Irish writer. Where Orwell's work is somewhat Manichaean, the writing of Maurice Collis (1889-1973) showed a subtler approach to similar themes. His long field experience in different remote stations shows through in the inimitable flavour and genuine depth of his books. As he wrote in the preface to She Was a Queen (1937), this irreplaceable experience gave him the "blood and spirit" of Burma pervasive throughout his works.

Collis studied history at Oxford from 1907 before joining the Indian Civil Service in 1911 and being appointed successively to posts in Sagaing, Arakan, Myeik and Rangoon as a colonial officer (1912-1934), deputy commissioner (the "local autocrat", in his own words) and then district magistrate.

An extraordinary storyteller, Collis wrote more than 20 books in a clear, visual and brisk style, all published by Faber and Faber. They include autobiographies (notably Into Hidden Burma, 1918-1931 and Trials in Burma, 1930-1931), biographies (of Marco Polo, Thomas Stamford Raffles and Fernão Mendes Pinto), plays, travel writings, chronicles, novels and romances. He was also a contributor to the Burma Research Journal.

He was obsessed by social-racial exclusiveness and the places where British and Burmese came into contact. In the late 1930s, for example, no Burmese – not even the acting governor, Sir Joseph Maung Gyi – was admitted to membership of the British clubs. Collis understood and recorded the prevailing tensions better than any other writer. Burmese colonial society, its balls and dinner parties provided near endless inspiration.

But more than this, Collis' books deserve to be read as first-rate historical documents. They show a shrewd understanding of people and the issues, without concessions. Indeed, one of Collis' greatest merits is his historian-like use of primary archival sources. His witty narratives, powerful recreations of the exotic Burmese scene, are based on abundant original notes, which are mainly preserved in the India Office Library in London.

The social dynamics in a colonial situation are far more complex than a confrontation of racial groups perceived solely in terms of antagonism. In a "colonial meeting"there are many cross-interactions and hybridisations between the coloniser and the colonized at all levels – political, economic and intimate.

Observing this, Collis found his favorite themes at junctures between racial communities – be they in the domestic or social spheres. The titles of the 12th and 14th chapters of Into Hidden Burma (1953) are in fact key to understanding Collis' work as a whole: "The Pressure of Conformity", and "Face to Face with Myself".

Most of his books depict the intertwined identities of "white men in colonial situations". A notable example is Siamese White (1936), dedicated to the inhabitants of Mergui and full of opium-smoking characters engaged with so-called "native women". They are painfully torn between commitment to British imperial rule and love of Burmese culture, a dilemma that could lead to a dangerous confusion of identity. How can we not see an autobiographical dimension in these portraits?

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