Dr David Richardson was a surgeon in the Madras European Regiment who saw military action in the 1824-26 war in Burma when he escorted a group of wounded to safety. He was seconded as a political officer to the administration of the new British territory of Tenasserim Provinces where he rose to be a senior assistant to the Commissioner, E.A. Blundell, with responsibilities for justice, finance, health, education and civil affairs. Richardson was chosen for his "scientific acquirements" and "mild and conciliatory manner". He was an excellent linguist. Richardson undertook a mission to the King of Siam in Bangkok in 1839. The material within these Papers is mainly to do with this mission.
Richardson married a Tai-speaking woman and died, age 49, in Moulmein. He translated and annotated a comprehensive and influential Buddhist legal text, the dhamathat or the laws of Menoo, which was published in 1847.
David Pocock was born in London and studied under FR Leavis at Pembroke College, Cambridge. In the early 1950s he went to Oxford and under the supervision of Edward Evans-Pritchard, carried out field research among Asian migrants in east Africa and subsequent work in Gujarat which resulted in two monographs. His collaboration with Louis Dumont led to the founding, in 1957, of the journal Contributions to Indian Sociology, which they wrote jointly for five years.
He moved to the University of Sussex, Brighton, in 1966, becoming Professor of Social Anthropology, retiring in 1987.