Burmese poet ko ko thett remembers James C. Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science and Professor of Anthropology at Yale University. Professor Scott was a comparative scholar of agrarian and non-state societies, subaltern politics, anarchism, and high modernism. He also helped to revive the Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship.

Eric Arthur Blair, the 19-year-old Eaton graduate who would become George Orwell, arrived in Burma (Myanmar) in 1922. For the next five years, he worked his way up the Imperial Police hierarchy, eventually becoming an assistant police superintendent. His posts took him to towns and villages infested with mosquitos, brothels, nationalists, thieves, and roaming armed gangs.