"In 1919 G. E. Harvey delivered a speech to staff and students of Rangoon College. Entitled ?The Writing of Burmese History,? his lecture exhorted local students to look to the ‘glories? and ‘shames? of their past, for ?in the beauty of old time you will find an ideal for the future.?2 Harvey encouraged the students to appreciate the ?beauty? of their past, yet also to take guidance from their modern English education. In concluding his lecture he exhorted the students to write the history of their own people, stating: ?It is for the younger generation with its superior mental training to justify its education, to help these men of an older generation and to take up the magnificent task of writing a fitting History of Burma.? Six years later a history in a form consistent with Harvey?s description was published under the title History of Burma: From the Earliest Times to March 1824 The Beginning of the English Conquest.4 The author of this history, however, was not a local student who was inspired by Harvey?s lecture, but rather Harvey himself. The History of Burma sets out to describe the histories, art and literature of the pre-colonial kingdoms in Burma. In this work Harvey combines the narratives of earlier European travellers to Burma with tales from the local chronicles, and evidence from the local inscriptions. Harvey?s text is an academic account of Burmese history, but it is also a highly literary and sometimes contradictory narrative. 5 Harvey, in his introduction to the book, describes it as ?a little pioneer work,? as much of the written evidence of pre-colonial Burma remains ?untranslated or unprinted.?6 Yet this book, which was originally published in London in 1925, was not just a ?little pioneer work,? it became one of the standard Burmese history texts in the late colonial period..."