Complementing Zomia and limits

Zomia describes an area of the Asian Highlands that – according to its inventors – shall be con-sidered as a political and historical area, which is marked by neglect, low population density, iso-lation, marginalization and domination from the lowland (MICHAUD 2010 187-188). Various attempts had been undertaken to define Zomia since the inception of the idea in 2002 by Willem van Schendel, each varying in size and attempting to find – sometimes on a very abstract level – features that tie the Asian uplands together into one area that underwent a similar experience of state-incorporation. While van Schendel relies more on political criteria to delineate Zomia that is rather vague in its geographical reach, Scott sees a stronger role for social markers to demarcate this space and so attributes an operational component to these highlands with their own logic and trajectories based on cultural, linguistic and local political traits. Both ideas of Zomia overlap to a some extent, yet Scott‘s definition of Zomia is the one that better fits to the geographic area of this thesis as can be seen in maps 2-4 (MICHAUD 2010 202-203).

Map 2: Different conceptualizations of Zomia (MICHAUD 2010, 203).

Map 3: Zomia in Southeast Asia (MICHAUD 2010, 205)

Map 4: territorial concepts of Zomia (MICHEAUD 2017, 6)

Zomia enables the model of this thesis but also sets automatic limits. The main limitation is ac-cess to local information. As MICHAUD (2010, 190, 192) points out, most of the written sources of the area are Chinese bureaucratic texts that ignored the literal or oral heritage of the local kingdoms and minorities. Thus, local history and conceptual understanding of statehood remains often unknown – also this thesis cannot draw from original sources given their accessibility and the linguistic barriers of the many languages used in this area.

A much greater limitation is the deductive approach taken by the proponents of Zomia. Given the difficulties to access local sources combined with the macro-longue-durée approach that informs that theory, many postulations come from the official histories of the central states to which Zo-mia is presented as an indigenous and overlooked antithesis or complement. Defining and classi-fying local events in their regional context requires much more detailed analysis on the ground to prove whether the extrapolations in the Zomia-theory – and also in this thesis – and the subsump-tion and aggregasubsump-tion of events into trends is a sensible and right approach with regard to local history (MAZARD 2011, 31).

Despite this limitation, the conceptualization of the area as Zomia enables the proposed model.

From the existing sources and the current knowledge – despite often spotty or one-sided – , it is clear that minority states existed, boasted their own autonomy and sovereignty and had a major impact in the general development of their adjacent lowland states. Scientists like James Scott

and Charles Patterson Giersch systemized Zomia in Southeast Asia and China by analysing transnational features and experiences of the highland peoples and setting their history apart from the centralized lowland states‘ trajectories and so provided a framework in which fluidity and lo-cal action could interact, negotiate, cooperate or reject relations with lowland states. Zomia so enables the proposed model as it looks beyond political borders and institutional competition by allowing more agency on the ground and so defining a social space that is countercurrent in its social, political an historical logic to the national histories of centralized states (MICHAUD 2010, 193-194). The question is however, how this logic of local political and economic history and interests work, and what conclusions can be derived from it.

Scott‘s idea of Zomia in Southeast Asia stipulates that this area is a non-state space whose inclu-sion and integration into the lowland states gradually happened as lowland states encroached more and more into the areas at their fringes through tributary relations, trade, population pres-sure and administration (MICHAUD 2010, 194; MICHAUD 2017, 6-7). They could integrate this area as it was not a centralized, somehow homogenous area nor had a political core that could develop, project and defend the interests of a Zomian polity. Thus, polities behaved like free elec-trons that entered and left orbits of lowland states, who in turn attempted to tie them down within political borders given the danger an uncontrolled periphery posed to them (SCOTT 2009, 6;

MICHAUD 2010, 205-206). The Zomia model so is based on a slowly developing political hier-archy depending on the power and location of the competing polities, putting the highland poli-ties at a disadvantage while the expanding lowland state gradually takes control over resoures and administration in the area through tributary relations, taxation or outright use of force, while the area was left to defend itself against imperial encroachment and to harbor those who fled from the lowland state (SCOTT 2009, 7; MICHAUD 2010 198, 211). Zomia so had a degree of agency, but this showed itself rather in a passive way that was influenced by the lowland states. As the states‘ interests for manpower and taxes pushed away people who wanted to avoid that, this set off a constant encroachment of the lowland states into the Zomia region that continued to defend its incorporation into the orbits of lowland centers (SCOTT 2009, 4-5; LITTLE, 2010). Zomia according to SCOTT (2009, 3-4) and MICHAUD (2010, 211-212) so became an area of re-sistance and refuge against states, while remaining stateless in its essence and therefore falling prey to the more advanced, consolidated and stronger lowland states, against whom they could only defend themselves but not take decisive action. The lowland centers were so pulling on the Zomia region to incorporate it, owing that to new cultivation techniques in these less fertile

re-gions to allow settlers to survive, taxation models imposed on local modes of production, and ex-ploiting these lands for their own national interests and projects, like the Qing did in Yunnan to set up their own opium industry to compete with the Western merchants but also by providing infrastructure to project coercive means into this region and allow the state to show its sovereign-ty and power in all of its claimed territories and over the people inhabiting them (SCOTT 2009 10-11, 32-33, 43; MICHAUD 2010, 195-196). At the same time, the lowland centers were push-ing into the Zomia-region with migratory patterns that displaced local populations and planned schemes to bring them closer to the center by settling the majority groups in the margins and so absorbing these margins in the administrative and cultural orbit of the lowland state (SCOTT 2009, 12)

This thesis, as in chapter 1.8.4 draws heavily on this approach of encroaching lowland states, however, it has to be expanded to take into account the agency of the pre-existing states that sprang up in this area.

While it is true that this area was highly fragmented in historical, economic and cultural terms, was marginalized from the mainstream technical and administrative developments and lacked central Zomian cores, harmonized political systems or unified polities, this thesis does not treat this particular stretch of territory in line with Scott‘s idea as a zone of non-governance, stateless-ness, buffer, resource-hub and rejection of statehood that became the passive victim of dominat-ing lowland states (MICHAUD 2010, 206-207; EXNER 2013). States existed in this part of Zo-mia at all times, some of them even as powerful as their lowland counterparts and so resilient that they could survive over centuries. Lan Xang, Sipsong Chau Tai, Sipsong Panna, the Shan states, Dali, Nanzhao are just a few examples of the many loosely connected states that sprawled in this area. As they were never fully consolidated, neither fully integrated into the lowland polities, the-se lands were suppothe-sed to be grey zones and buffers within Zomia, yet still they formed states and played a crucial part in the consolidation of the pre-colonial empires and kingdoms (MICHAUD 2010, 207-208). FISKESJÖ (2010, 243-245; cf. WIMMER 2013, 82) in addition points out the process of secondary state formation, which shall describe the emulation of already existing state structures by other polities, which in turn sets off new state building exercises – a process that happened often among the Shan states and which would weaken the argumentation that administrative structures of lowland states penetrated the uplands, when these uplands actual-ly emulated those.

Therefore, this thesis tries to avoid adopting the idea of Scott that Zomia is an area of refuge, de-fensiveness and marginalization from the lowland centers and that this form of domination and subordination constitutes a central trait of Southeast Asian Zomia (MICHAUD 2010, 199). Fol-lowing such an approach would bulldoze over the many different forms of local agency and re-duce the plethora of states to mere footnotes even though their existence had large consequences for the regional historical trajectories. It would also see these upland states only as a byproduct of lowland state-making formed by groups who rejected this process and would not see these bor-der-states as polities that existed and were formed in their own right (cf. SCOTT 2009, 24). This thesis therefore integrates the criticism that unlike Scott‘s postulation of a stateless region and society, there were many states in the area – essentially also a main condition in the presented model – that provided local polities with the necessary agency to modulate their relations with the lowland states.

Contrary to both SCOTT (2009) and MICHAUD (2010) postulations, this thesis also sees less of a constant encroachment, but rather a competition between different systems of statehood and local interests, that were put forward with means of control and coercion, that were very different in scope and intensity in the lowlands and the highlands. SCOTT (2009, 27-28) recognizes that the development was a back-and-forth process but sees this again as result of lowland states‘

strengthening and weakening followed by a response from a population that was fugitive from these states. This thesis however, having this back and forth consolidation as a core part in its model, recognizes this oscillation as a result of or compromise of competing interests between lowland and upland polities, and so can better take into account the ability of local agents to use the wider circumstances for the benefit of their polities.

It is thus important to understand that this thesis does not refute the idea of Zomia but attempts to a certain degree for this stretch of the area to reconcile the fact that Zomia consisted of states with the dynamics and fluidity that the idea of Zomia as non-state space offers. It tries to achieve that by focusing on the agency of these states and local actors, that were enabled by their independent power bases, and so could pro-actively develop their own relations and modulate their own inter-ests vis-à-vis lowland states. Like this, these peoples and statelets were not just passive victims of gradually encroaching lowland states, rather their trajectories were often disrupted through their own agency and their fate hinged upon circumstances outside of their control until they finally were integrated into these lowland states.

The approach taken here somehow fits with the fluid characteristics of Zomia as well as the fact the polities and states sprawled all over the frontier area insofar as it looks at the capacities of lo-cal polities to autonomously modulate relations with central states. From this point, it is possible to see that the dynamics in this area are far more driven by wider circumstances than a binary as-sumption of predatory encroaching states on the one side and their rejection on the other. Rather, it draws a picture of an eco-system, in which both of them rely and need each other across differ-ent fields of interaction.

As ANDERSONS (2006, 19) points out, kingships are organized around centers, with fading boundaries, uneven reach and sovereignty that spans over a not legally demarcated territory, so that their attraction and power fades and meshes with other kingdoms. However, each of these kingdoms had their own interests regarding commerce, defense, technology, administration and politics – yet in each of these fields, their ability to project power was necessarily not the same.

With this in mind, the thesis looks at multiple frontiers, each one delimitating the territorial reach of a particular field of cooperation or antagonism, such as commerce, politics or defense. This idea draws from DESAI (2013) who describes an interplay of economic and territorial frontiers as a form of expansion during the Cold War period, in which he sees the economic, ideological or developmental inclusion into an orbit of larger powers as a substitute for territorial expansion.

In the Southeast Asian borderlands, as will be shown, the mining frontier (SHIN 2006), a farming frontier (TROCK, 2009), the binding effects of a common enemy or converging commercial in-terests between lowland and upland states accounted for different frontiers that determined the reach of the lowland state and the autonomy of the border polities.

In commerce, this issue was very pronounced, as smuggling activities allowed financing polities like enterprises, siphoning off tariff and tax income from state-coffers and allowing to position themselves as alternatives to local or lowland states. The result was waxing and waning spheres of commercial interests in line with the global and regional economic situation, which often led to conflicting territorial claims within a setting of states – not necessarily in opposition to the idea of statehood or control but a competition in design and structure of different forms of statehood (TAGLIACOZZO 2001, 255; cf SCOTT 2009, 49). Thus, the reach of state centers – be they lowland or upland polities – was different for economic interests, political interests and defense capabilities, each determined by different factors and commodities that each had the capacity to link or de-link upland and lowland poplities and to prevent or allow expansion of upland or low-land states – a fact also SCOTT (2009, 51) recognizes for his idea of Zomia.

However, this in combination with giving local agency a greater role to play, makes this area not just a barbarian hinterland that was needed as a counterfactual to legitimize the civilizational su-periority of the lowland state as SCOTT (2009, 111, 327) describes. Neither was it a derivative of lowland state formation that slowly ―filled up‖ the empty space (cf. SCOTT 2009, 137, 326-327).

It was not just a one-sided push into the area rather Zomia was a functional entity in its own right whose survival depended on managing its internal structure and navigating these external influ-ences such as migratory pressure, warfare, revolts and global trade (cf. SCOTT 2009, 142).

As GIERSCH (2010, 216-217) points out, Zomia should be better understood as a tool and tax-onomy for the many different levels of interactions and shifting boundaries and zones of influ-ence among and between lowland and upland polities. While Zomia and a fair amount of traits and characteristics Scott ascribed to it represent a particular configuration of power, one has to look at the networks that form this configuration, modulate exchanges and create dependencies and from their develop further the impact and results of these activities onto the region as a whole (GIERSCH 2010, 218).

Zomia in this thesis therefore is not just a passive hinterland but an active world region, on which the proposed model is tested. It relies on certain aspects that Scott elaborated for Zomia, such as the back and forth character, the mobility and multiple loyalties, the membrane that existed sepa-rating upland from lowland polities, and the pulling and pushing of the lowland states to pene-trate the border-region, but it refutes the notion of it being simply a zone of refuge, statelessness and state-rejection that slowly was drawn into the lowland orbit by states that pushed into this pristine statelessness. It provides a much greater role to play for local agency informed by an in-teraction of local interests in upland polities and lowland needs for bordering and defense. It also takes into account that there were various push and pull factors on both ends – the lowland cen-ters and the border polities – that attracted or fended off encroachments and let polities flourish or get integrated into lowland states. This thesis does this not in the framework of an inevitable ne-cessity of historic processes that prescribed the gradual expansion of the lowland states but rather sees it as a result of diverging capacities in agency, mobilization and resources to maintain order and capabilities of polities to act on their own behalf. Attributing a larger degree of agency to the border polities circumvents the idea of statelessness and allows introducing the organizational an administrative properties of border polities as an alternative concept to the lowland state, forged not only by its own needs but in constant interaction across its borders and limits with other – both upland and lowland – states, which eventually should end in a clear line of demarcation. As

an active region, the border-area here cannot be understood as a passive stateless area of refuge, shielded by impenetrable geographic features such as mountains and forests (cf. SCOTT 2009, 161), but needs to be seen as an actor in its own right, within its own set of constraints, enabling opportunities, institutions and interests that stem from a more complex interactive position and role of the border polities than just as remote buffers and raw material providers, that had to be integrated through warfare and distance-reducing infrastructure and were populated by refugees from lowland state building exercises and warfare. Dependencies between border polities and lowland states were constantly reformed and re-modulated, while the fact that most of the time the border polities remained outside direct political control should not be understood as stateless-ness (cf. SCOTT 2009,166, 326-327; cf. GIERSCH 2010, 219-220 ). Therefore, despite being a part of Scotts Zomia, the border area as treated in this thesis was not just a mirror-image or deriv-ative of state building, but a world-region whose actions were not just reactive and interests not only shaped by the relations and interdependencies with lowland centers. As the border-area and the polities in there fulfilled a function in addition to their existence, the states could institutional-ize the bordering that they were supposed to do as buffer states and so could foster leverage re-garding the lowland states to push forward their interests and encounter encroachments not on a defensive post but in a position that was framed by multiple interests and projection. The interests of the border polities so were proactively leveraged in relationships and exchanges which had wide ramifications for the formation of the region and the political borders between China and Southeast Asia. This characteristic of the border area is at the core of this thesis and goes beyond the capacities and agency ascribed to Zomia in the model of Scott.