Book excerpt: Joseph Dautremer was a French scholar specializing in Asian languages who served for a time as the French consul in Rangoon, the capital of British Burma. Burma Under British Rule is a detailed study of Burma, with chapters devoted to the history, people, physical geography, economy, and international trade of the country. A brief concluding chapter deals with the Andaman Islands, where the British maintained a penal colony. Originally published in Paris in 1912, Dautremer's book was translated from the French into English by Sir (James) George Scott (1851-1935), a British administrator in Burma and the author of important books on Burma and Vietnam. In his introduction to Dautremer's study, Scott wrote that "[his] book is much more like a consular report of the ideal kind than a mere description of the country." One of Dautremer's major objectives in writing the book was to draw lessons from British experience that the French could use in governing their nearby colonies in Indochina.