Maung Shaw Loo

The first student from Myanmar to study in US

The first Burmese student to come to America (and perhaps the first Burmese ever in America) was Maung Shaw Loo, who travelled from his native Moulmein to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania in 1858, just before the American Civil War. This photograph of him was taken in the little town of Goshen, Indiana, c. 1865. In 1857, aged 17, Maung Shaw Loo left Burma to study in Calcutta. During the Indian Mutiny in 1858 he stowed away on a ship for America; when...