On The Borders of State Power: Frontiers in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region (Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia)

On The Borders of State Power

On The Borders of State Power explores the changing nature, meaning and significance of international borders over time in the area referred to today as the Greater Mekong Sub-region, incorporating Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and China’s Yunnan province. An international line-up of contributors examine the changing nature of borders over time, using examples from the fifteenth to twenty-first centuries, and engage with contemporary literature on globalisation, particularly as it applies to borders and the nature of state power. What the book finds is that there is far greater diversity in terms of the importance of borders across time than is commonly thought. Thus, borders commonly thought to be closed are often more open, open borders are found to be more restricted, while pre-colonial frontiers, which are usually viewed as relatively unimportant compared with the colonial era, are in fact found to have been more closely governed. Looking at the contemporary period, the book shows how economic liberalisation – or so-called cooperation between the Mekong states in the post-Cold War period – has been accompanied not by the retreat of the state but rather by its expansion, including in ways which frequently impose greatest restrictions on the poor and marginalised. Incorporating work by both historians and social scientists, this book is a valuable read for those interested in the politics, development and geography of South East Asia. Martin Gainsborough is Reader in Development Politics at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.

Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia

1 The Police in Occupation Japan Control, corruption and resistance to reform Christopher Aldous

8 Religion and Nationalism in India The case of the Punjab Harnik Deol

2 Chinese Workers A new history Jackie Sheehan

9 Japanese Industrialisation Historical and cultural perspectives Ian Inkster

3 The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya 4 The Australia-Japan Political Alignment 1952 to the present Alan Rix 5 Japan and Singapore in the World Economy Japan’s economic advance into Singapore, 1870–1965 Shimizu Hiroshi and Hirakawa Hitoshi 6 The Triads as Business Yiu Kong Chu 7 Contemporary Taiwanese Cultural Nationalism A-chin Hsiau

10 War and Nationalism in China 1925–1945 Hans J. van de Ven 11 Hong Kong in Transition One country, two systems Edited by Robert Ash, Peter Ferdinand, Brian Hook and Robin Porter 12 Japan’s Postwar Economic Recovery and Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1948–1962 Noriko Yokoi 13 Japanese Army Stragglers and Memories of the War in Japan, 1950–1975 Beatrice Trefalt 14 Ending the Vietnam War The Vietnamese Communists’ perspective Ang Cheng Guan

15 The Development of the Japanese Nursing Profession Adopting and adapting Western influences Aya Takahashi

24 The Internment of Western Civilians under the Japanese, 1941–1945 A patchwork of internment Bernice Archer

16 Women’s Suffrage in Asia Gender, nationalism and democracy Louise Edwards and Mina Roces

25 The British Empire and Tibet 1900–1922 Wendy Palace

17 The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902–1922 Phillips Payson O’Brien 18 The United States and Cambodia, 1870–1969 From curiosity to confrontation Kenton Clymer 19 Capitalist Restructuring and the Pacific Rim Ravi Arvind Palat 20 The United States and Cambodia, 1969–2000 A troubled relationship Kenton Clymer 21 British Business in Post-Colonial Malaysia, 1957–70 ‘Neo-colonialism’ or ‘Disengagement’? Nicholas J. White 22 The Rise and Decline of Thai Absolutism Kullada Kesboonchoo Mead 23 Russian Views of Japan, 1792–1913 An anthology of travel writing David N. Wells

26 Nationalism in Southeast Asia If the people are with us Nicholas Tarling 27 Women, Work and the Japanese Economic Miracle The case of the cotton textile industry, 1945–1975 Helen Macnaughtan 28 A Colonial Economy in Crisis Burma’s rice cultivators and the world depression of the 1930s Ian Brown 29 A Vietnamese Royal Exile in Japan Prince Cuong De (1882–1951) Tran My-Van 30 Corruption and Good Governance in Asia Nicholas Tarling 31 US-China Cold War Collaboration, 1971–1989 S. Mahmud Ali 32 Rural Economic Development in Japan From the nineteenth century to the Pacific War Penelope Francks

33 Colonial Armies in Southeast Asia Edited by Karl Hack and Tobias Rettig 34 Intra Asian Trade and the World Market A. J. H. Latham and Heita Kawakatsu 35 Japanese-German Relations, 1895–1945 War, diplomacy and public opinion Edited by Christian W. Spang and Rolf-Harald Wippich 36 Britain’s Imperial Cornerstone in China The Chinese maritime customs service, 1854–1949 Donna Brunero

42 Beijing – A Concise History Stephen G. Haw 43 The Impact of the RussoJapanese War Edited by Rotem Kowner 44 Business-Government Relations in Prewar Japan Peter von Staden 45 India’s Princely States People, Princes and Colonialism Edited by Waltraud Ernst and Biswamoy Pati 46 Rethinking Gandhi and Nonviolent Relationality Global Perspectives Edited by Debjani Ganguly and John Docker

37 Colonial Cambodia’s ‘Bad Frenchmen’ The rise of French rule and the life of Thomas Caraman, 1840–1887 Gregor Muller

47 The Quest for Gentility in China Negotiations Beyond Gender and Class Edited by Daria Berg and Chloë Starr

38 Japanese-American Civilian Prisoner Exchanges and Detention Camps, 1941–45 Bruce Elleman

48 Forgotten Captives in Japanese Occupied Asia Edited by Kevin Blackburn and Karl Hack

39 Regionalism in Southeast Asia Nicholas Tarling

49 Japanese Diplomacy in the 1950s From Isolation to Integration Edited by Iokibe Makoto, Caroline Rose, Tomaru Junko and John Weste

40 Changing Visions of East Asia, 1943–93 Transformations and continuities R.B. Smith (Edited by Chad J. Mitcham) 41 Christian Heretics in Late Imperial China Christian inculturation and state control, 1720–1850 Lars P. Laamann

50 The Limits of British Colonial Control in South Asia Spaces of Disorder in the Indian Ocean Region Edited by Ashwini Tambe and Harald Fischer-Tiné 51 On The Borders of State Power Frontiers in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region Edited by Martin Gainsborough

On The Borders of State Power Frontiers in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region

Edited by Martin Gainsborough

First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 5RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2009 Editorial Selection and matter, Martin Gainsborough. Individual chapters, the contributors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data On the borders of state power : frontiers in the greater Mekong sub-region / edited by Martin Gainsborough. p. cm. — (Routledge studies in the modern history of Asia ; 51) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Mekong River Region–Boundaries. 2. Mekong River Region–Politics and government. I. Gainsborough, Martin, 1966– DS545.5.O6 2008 320.959—dc22 2008021862

ISBN 0-203-93470-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10 0-415-41465-2 (hbk) ISBN10 0-203-93470-9 (ebk) ISBN13 978-0-415-41465-4 (hbk) ISBN13 978-0-203-93470-8 (ebk)

Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgements About the contributors

ix x xii

1 Introduction: borders, globalisation and the state in historical context 1 MARTIN GAINSBOROUGH

2 Unhealthy air of the mountains: Kinh and ethnic minority rule on the Sino–Vietnamese frontier from the fifteenth to the twentieth century

12

EMMANUEL POISSON

3 Post-Taiping fallout: Nguyen–Qing collaboration in the pursuit of bandits on the border

25

BRADLEY C. DAVIS

4 The struggle to control land grabbing: state formation on the Central Highlands frontier under the First Republic of Vietnam (1954–63)

35

STAN B-H TAN

5 ‘Community development’ on the Sino–Burmese border: villagers, Oxfam and the Chinese state MIWA HIRONO

51

viii

Contents

6 The politics of ‘opening up’: female traders on the borderlands of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Burma (Myanmar)

60

KYOKO KUSAKABE

7 Dreaming beyond borders: the Thai/Lao borderlands and the mobility of the marginal

75

HOLLY HIGH

8 Conclusion: are the Mekong frontiers sites of exception?

101

ANDREW WALKER

Index

112

Illustrations

Maps 2.1 Northern Dai Viet (seventeenth to eighteenth centuries) 2.2 Northern Dai Nam (nineteenth century)

13 14

Tables 2.1 Prominent lineages in Lang Son province 2.2 Positions classified ‘unhealthy’ in 1912 4.1 Examples of land sales between Highlanders and kinh in Lam Dong province contained in Huynh Cong Tinh’s report

17 20 43

Acknowledgements

While all the best projects have a long gestation – and are worth the wait – this one does seem to have been an exceptionally long time in coming. As the book’s editor, I bear full responsibility for this! The book’s origins go back to two conference panels in 2003 and 2004, the first of which I was not involved in organising but had the pleasure to attend and the second of which I co-organised. The first was a panel entitled ‘Discovering the Middle Ground: Frontiers and Borders in Mainland South East Asia’ organised by one of the contributors to this volume, Stan B-H Tan, for the Third International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS 3) held in Singapore in August 2003. Stan Tan and two other contributors to this volume, Miwa Hirono and Andrew Walker, presented papers at the Singapore panel. The second panel I co-organised with Jacob Ramsay, then of the Australian National University, for the Fourth Conference of the European Association for South East Asian Studies (EUROESEAS) held in Paris, in September 2004. It was entitled ‘Border Provinces and Border Relations of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos: Past and Present’ and included papers by all but one of the remaining contributors to this volume, namely Holly High, Emmanuel Poisson, Kyoko Kusakabe, and myself. The book, as should be self-evident, represents a fusing of these two conference panels with the addition of Bradley Davis’s chapter at a later date. I am very grateful to all the book’s contributors for agreeing to join the project. It has been a fascinating exercise and I have learnt a lot. Part of the reason that the book has taken so long to materialise is that we wanted to ensure that it was more just a collection of disparate conferences papers, and this has required a substantial amount of discussion, collaboration and editing. In this respect, I would like to offer my very sincere thanks to all the authors for their supreme patience in respect of my editing of their chapters, my endless questions, and for being willing to comment so generously on each other’s work. It has truly been a team effort. I have happy memories of meetings in Shanghai and Canberra with a number of the

Acknowledgements xi book’s authors which just shows the lengths we went to get it right. I have also enjoyed working with people across a range of academic disciplines, including political scientists, historians and scholars in development studies and anthropology. I believe that the book’s multidisciplinary character is one of the things which give it its unique edge. I would like to thank my colleagues at Routledge, notably Stephanie Rogers and Leanne Hinves, for having confidence in the project in the first place and for sticking with us, and the Department of Politics at the University of Bristol for granting me a term’s study leave to work on the book. I would also like to acknowledge the assistance of the British Academy’s Research Committee on South East Asian Studies for a research visit to the Vietnam–China border in 2007 which helped immeasurably in the preparation of this book. Finally, I would like to thank my children, Annie, Francis and Rosa, who like seeing their names in print, and my wife, Mary, who knows only too well what a labour of love the preparation of this book has been. Martin Gainsborough Bristol

About the contributors

Bradley C. Davis is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Washington. He is currently completing his dissertation on banditry in the nineteenth-century China–Vietnam borderlands. Martin Gainsborough is Reader in Development Politics in the Department of Politics at the University of Bristol. He is also director of the Bristol– Mekong Project and Associate Director of the University’s Centre for Governance and International Affairs. He teaches on theories of development, and Vietnamese and Asian politics with a specialist interest in the state. He is author of Changing Political Economy of Vietnam: the case of Ho Chi Minh City (Routledge, 2003) and is currently working on a book on the politics of modern Vietnam. Holly High is a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, The University of Sydney. She obtained her PhD in Anthropology from the Australian National University. High has published articles examining rural Lao sociality, ritual and historical narratives. Currently, she is writing a book examining development initiatives in Laos, and conducting research regarding oral history and sociality in the Ho Chi Minh Trail area of Laos. Miwa Hirono is a Research Council UK (RCUK) Research Fellow at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham. She taught at the Department of International Relations at the Australian National University, where she was awarded a PhD in International Relations. She was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Anthropology and Ethnology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing (2003–04), and conducted extensive fieldwork throughout many provinces and autonomous regions in China. She is the author of Civilizing Missions: international religious agencies in China (Palgrave MacMillan, forthcoming 2009).

About the contributors xiii Kyoko Kusakabe is an Associate Professor in Gender and Development Studies in School of Environment, Resources and Development, Asian Institute of Technology (AIT). She teaches gender analysis and gender planning, as well as women in casual employment and informal enterprises. Her geographical focus is on Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar. Her recent research focuses on gender issues in cross-border trade and migration, especially in relation to the regional economic integration of the Greater Mekong Sub-region. Emmanuel Poisson is Associate Professor at the University Paris-Diderot and former member of the École Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO). He teaches Vietnamese history, with an emphasis on the history of bureaucracy from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. He is also deputy editor of the research programme on Vietnamese genealogies (Institute of Vietnamese Studies and Development Sciences in Hanoi, University Paris-Diderot, University of Alberta and École Française d’Extrême-Orient). Since 2005 his editorial work has been chiefly dedicated to the Paris-based International Journal of Asian Studies, where he has been acting as one of the chief editors. As an author, Poisson has published Mandarins et Subalternes au Nord du Viet Nam – Une Bureaucratie à l’épreuve, 1820–1918 (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2004), translated and published in Vietnam in 2006. Stan B-H Tan is Assistant Professor at the Southeast Asian Studies Program, National University of Singapore. He is also Coordinator for the project ‘Beyond Hills and Plains: rethinking state, society and economy in the Southeast Asian Massif’. He teaches on Peasants and Agrarian Societies in Southeast Asia with a special focus on Vietnam and Yunnan. He is a co-author of Des Montagnards aux Minorites ethniques: Quelle integration nationale pour les inhabitants des hautes terres du Vietnam et du Cambodge? (Paris–Bangkok: L’Harmattan/IRASEC, 2003) and is currently preparing publication of his book concerning state formation in the Central Highlands of Vietnam during the First Republic. Andrew Walker is a Fellow in the Resource Management in Asia Pacific Program at The Australian National University. His interests include social and economic transformation in borderland regions, rural modernisation and state–society relations. He is author of The Legend of the Golden Boat: regulation, trade and traders in the borderlands of Laos, Thailand, Burma and China (Curzon/University of Hawaii, 1999) and co-author (with Tim Forsyth) of Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers: the politics of environment knowledge in Northern Thailand (University of Washington Press, 2008).

1

Introduction: borders, globalisation and the state in historical context1 Martin Gainsborough

This is a book about borders in the Greater Mekong Sub-region – to use contemporary terminology. One of the striking features of this book is that it incorporates work by both historians and social scientists, including political scientists and scholars in development studies and anthropology. In this introduction, I want to explain the rationale for this. I have also come at this book with an abiding interest in the state. This has undoubtedly influenced the way in which I have edited the individual chapters, even if ostensibly this is a book about borders. A real challenge of this project has been the extent to which one can talk meaningfully about the state in a book which spans some six hundred years of history and a broad geographical and cultural terrain, and thus arguably incorporates a wide variety of state forms.2 This is also something I want to address here, setting out what it is the book is hoping to achieve by placing discussions of the state from very different historical time periods alongside each other. Not all the contributors to this book are thinking about borders in the same way, which is healthy. Nevertheless, the different approaches contained within this book require some explanation and this too will form part of this opening chapter. Finally, while the book aims to speak beyond the realms of area studies, the fact of its geographical focus requires some comment. Some thoughts, therefore, on how the book conceives of the Greater Mekong Sub-region in a way which further unites the book’s individual chapters comprises the penultimate section of this introductory chapter, prior to an outline of the book’s structure.

Globalisation and the state My interest in borders arose initially not from specialised research on borders per se but rather from an interest in globalisation and the state. Since embarking on this project I have inevitably had to think more deeply about borders. I have also had the opportunity to conduct fieldwork among Vietnamese traders on the Lao Cai–Yunnan border.3 However, my interest

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in globalisation and the state has persisted. Without doubt the literature on globalisation and the state has many faults.4 Nevertheless, it is worth noting that it makes quite a few claims about the nature of borders, specifically how so-called ‘globalisation’ is said to embody a change in the nature of flows across national borders whether this is of goods, people, information or money. Held et al. talk in terms of changes in intensity and velocity of cross-border flows, among other things, where intensity refers to the frequency with which flows occur and velocity refers to the speed at which they occur (Held et al. 2000: 14–16). The most commonly cited example relates to financial flows, where the financial sector is depicted as being integrated across national borders, such that massive amounts of money can be moved quickly around the world, simply at the press of button (Beeson 2003: 361). While some of these images are inevitably contemporary and do not apply to earlier historical time periods, the assertion is that in today’s world, such developments are having implications for the authority of states. While the nuances of this are complex, the findings of this book offer little support to the notion that states are being eclipsed.5 In fact, the period since the late 1980s, which one might not unreasonably associate with neo-liberal ideas about economic liberalisation, seems to have been associated with an expansion of state regulation along the borders scrutinised in this volume not a contraction (see Chapters 5, 6 and 7). The important thing to note about many of the claims made about socalled globalisation is that they inevitably rest on assumptions about how the world was in the past, which may or may not be correct. Indeed, a key driving force behind this book was the observation that only by incorporating the work of historians into our analysis would we be able to come to a view about whether such assumptions were justified.6 A tentative finding of this book, interestingly, is that many of them cannot.7 This can be illustrated most clearly with reference to the tendency when writing about borders in the Greater Mekong Sub-region to conceive of them as ‘closed’ during the Cold War and ‘open’ thereafter. The whole notion of ‘opening up’, which is a phrase commonly applied to the Communist and former Communist states of the Mekong sub-region following the end of the Cold War, captures this idea well. However, as a number of the chapters in this volume illustrate, the reality is much more complex, since what we find is that many borders in the sub-region were not entirely ‘closed’ during the Cold War just as they are not entirely ‘open’ today (see Chapters 6 and 7). The issue of potentially misleading assumptions about the past go deeper than just a misreading of the nature of the Cold War, however. Particularly influential in terms of thinking about borders in South East Asia has been writing on the pre-colonial period which has tended to depict states as having ‘strong centres’ and vaguely drawn peripheries (Wolters 1982, Stuart-Fox

Introduction

3

1997). Based on this view of the past, the suggestion is that borders became more important during the colonial era. However, it is worth asking whether this view is correct, or whether it applies uniformly across South East Asia. Certainly, two chapters in this volume suggest a deep-seated concern on the part of the Vietnamese court with its border with China going back to the fifteenth century. This implies that the periphery was anything but vague even if sometimes it was weakly governed (see Chapters 2 and 3).8 Whether this reflects a difference between Sinicised and Indianised South East Asia is worth considering, although it is beyond the scope of this book.9 Comparisons across time are also revealing insofar as they suggest that a tendency to view borders as ‘dark’ and ‘dangerous’ – representative of ‘the other’ perhaps – are not just to be associated with contemporary concerns with human trafficking, prostitution and drugs but in fact go back hundreds of years (see Chapters 2, 6 and 7). Thus, in highlighting an attitude which seems to be fairly universal across time, we are challenged to ask what it is about borders that provokes such a response.

Rethinking the state One of the criticisms of the globalisation and the state literature is that it often says more about globalisation than it does about the state. And yet, fundamentally, this literature is supposed to be about the changing nature of the state. A major part of the problem is the state is rarely unpacked, largely because it is assumed – erroneously – that we know what it is (Phillips 2005). As I have worked on this book, I have continued to read widely on the literature on the state. A major influence on my thinking has been the writing of Timothy Mitchell (1991 and 2006). Mitchell highlights what he regards as a widespread tendency within political science to neglect the way in which the state exerts control over us at the level of our mind – what Mitchell refers to as the state’s ‘ideological effect’.10 This manifests itself as the state appearing to be a ‘freestanding entity’ – set apart from society – when in fact the distinction is purely a conceptual one. That is, beyond the conceptual realm, there is no hard and fast distinction between state and society, public and private, or any of the other common binaries through which we typically order our thought processes. That it appears this way is precisely what Mitchell is talking about when he speaks of the state’s ideological effects. The effect of this ‘trick of the light’, Mitchell and others have noted, is that it diverts our attention from the real way in which state power is exercised, namely through the production, re-production and policing of a boundary which is portrayed as being distinct when, as we have seen, it is anything but.11 From the perspective of states, this is advantageous. It lends

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legitimacy to what they are doing (for example, the state can say that it is only disciplining people who abuse their public position for private gain, based around a boundary which because of the state’s ideological effects citizens by and large accept) while also giving the state considerable discretion in terms of when to act because the boundary between public and private is not as clear cut as is implied. Discretion leads to the arbitrary exercise of power, which leads to uncertainty. Keeping people in a state of uncertainty is a well known means of exercising control over them (Hibou ed 2004). What is most striking about Mitchell’s writing on the state is that it would appear to apply equally to so-called developed and developing states.12 Seeking to explain how it is that the state can appear as a free-standing entity, Mitchell draws on Foucault’s notion of disciplines understood as ‘powers generated by meticulous organisation of space, movement, sequence and position’ (Mitchell 1991: 92–3). Within this, things such as the architecture of government buildings, military parades and, relevant for our purposes, borders perform a central role in constantly reinforcing our sense that the state exists as a free-standing entity distinct from society. Noting that borders are a key domain where the state’s ideological effect is maintained and upheld is useful in respect of the goals of this book. First, it shows the clear connection between borders and state power. Thus, when studying one we cannot help but shed light on the other. Second, it alerts us to the ideological dimensions of state power and particularly how when studying borders we need to be careful not to fall victim to the state’s ability to influence what we see and what we comment on. For Foucault, as with Mitchell, power is therefore less seen as ‘external constraint’ but more as entering into social processes and working from within (including on us as scholars). In terms of thinking about how power is exercised, it is something readers of this book might like to bear in mind as they read the individual chapters. On the other hand, there may be some problems associated with thinking about the state in this way in a book which spans some six hundred years of history and covers both pre-colonial and post-colonial South East Asia. The question we are forced to consider is whether pre-colonial state forms have anything in common with post-colonial ones. Or, to stay with the insights of Mitchell, could any of what he says, which is very much geared towards a ‘modernist’ view of the state, apply to pre-colonial states in South East Asia? Or, to make a different point, do Mitchell’s ideas apply equally or in the same way to all post-colonial ones? This is clearly a huge subject, which undoubtedly requires a lot more research.13 However, in this book, we simply wish to say that we find it helpful to consider contemporary discussions of ‘trans-national’ cooperation between contemporary states in the Greater Mekong Sub-region – seeking to restrict flows of goods and people across

Introduction

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their borders, for example (see Chapters 6 and 7) – alongside ‘trans-border’ cooperation between Nguyen Vietnam and Qing China in the 1860s (see Chapter 3), asking what the points of commonality might be. While we are certainly alert to the fact that there may be important differences, we would urge caution before concluding that they have nothing in common. Equally, as we consider the ‘ideological effects’ of the modern state as highlighted by Mitchell, would it be true to say that the Nguyen court exerted no such influence in terms of how people thought either about the state or the frontier? Again, I would urge the reader to be cautious before concluding that no comparison is possible (see Chapters 2 and 3). An additional comment on the subject of the state needs to be made. While we are aspiring in this book to understand the entity known as ‘the state’ better, we are under no illusions that it is, or should necessarily be viewed, as a unitary actor – on the contrary. One of the exciting aspects of taking Mitchell’s writing on the state seriously is that it becomes quite hard to ‘believe in’ the state at all. Karl Marx, moreover, described the state as nothing more than the ‘official résumé of society’ (Leys 1996: 9). Thus, Marx, like Mitchell, also appears to be alluding to the fact that in reality nothing but a conceptual boundary separates the state from society. Once one goes down this route the notion of a unitary state also becomes much harder to sustain. Thankfully, many, if not all, of the chapters in this volume provide plenty of ammunition for thinking about the state in non-unitary terms.

Rethinking borders Two further points need to be made in this introduction in order to set the scene for the book. The first concerns the way in which borders are understood in this volume. Not all of the book’s contributors are thinking about borders simply in terms of a geographical frontier – loose or otherwise – between two sovereign nations or polities. Rather, the book incorporates two additional meanings in respect of an understanding of borders, firstly that of an ‘internal frontier’ and secondly that of viewing borders simply in terms of any place where diverse ideas and practices meet. Thus, in Chapter 4, Stan Tan conceptualises the existence of an ‘internal frontier’ between the ‘lowland’ Vietnamese state and that of the Central Highlands in the Republic of Vietnam (former South Vietnam) in the 1950s and 1960s. Here, ideas and practices of rule emanating from the kinh (Vietnamese) state, on the one hand, and non-kinh people in the Highlands on the other, particularly as they pertained to land use, were quite different. Tan’s notion of an internal frontier thus highlights the way in which in any state there may be – at least in theory – any number of frontiers understood in terms of the point at which a state’s writ fails to extend. While not using the language of

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internal frontier, Miwa Hirono is interested in her chapter (Chapter 5) in an understanding of frontier which posits an intermingling of diverse ideas and practices involving a local community near the Chinese border with Burma/ Myanmar, the Chinese state, and the international NGO, Oxfam. While both approaches are perhaps less common in border studies, they encourage us to think more deeply about the nature and significance of the frontier over and above simply that of a geographical frontier.

‘Greater Mekong Sub-region’? While this book seeks to offer insights of relevance beyond simply area studies, it is also a book which gathers expertise on what in today’s parlance is referred to as the Greater Mekong Sub-region. This terminology owes much to the activities of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) which since the early 1990s and the ending of the Cold War has committed itself to the ‘development’ of the sub-region. Many of the contributors in this book would probably take issue with much of what the ADB claims and asserts both in terms of what it says it is doing and how it understands trends in the subregion.14 Indeed, one could say that the very rationale of this book is to strive for a more nuanced account of frontiers in the sub-region which goes beyond simple ideas of increased ‘cooperation’, which is very much what underpins the official discourse of the ADB in terms of what it says it is doing. In fact, as a number of the chapters demonstrate rather well, so-called ‘cooperation’ has led to new forms of regulation and restriction, particularly, it would appear, targeted at the poor and marginal (see Chapters 6 and 7). Despite our reticence about associating ourselves with an ADB-style vision of the sub-region, this is a book which focuses on states connected to the Mekong River and thus seeks to shed light on this corner of the globe. However, for this author, what links these states together is not so much anything the ADB may have said or done but rather a sense in which it is possible to speak in terms of shared political economy where patronage, money and relationships are far more important than any notion of ‘policy’ or ‘rule of law’.15 This too comes across in many of the book’s chapters, and once again, I suspect this points to distinctive state forms – not uninfluenced by modernist or colonial views of the state but distinctive nevertheless.16

Structure of the book In terms of geographical focus, the book includes chapters which look at borders in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Burma (Myanmar) and China. There are two chapters which take as their focus the China–Vietnam border (Chapters 2 and 3), one chapter which focuses on the internal frontier

Introduction

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within the Republic of Vietnam (former South Vietnam) (Chapter 4). There is a chapter which looks at developments close to the China–Burma border (Chapter 5), one which scrutinises four border regions, namely between Laos and Thailand, Thailand and Cambodia, and Thailand and Burma (Chapter 6), and one which focuses on the Laos–Thailand border (Chapter 7). Emmanuel Poisson’s chapter (Chapter 2), which follows this introduction, looks at Vietnamese and French rule on the Sino–Vietnamese border from the fifteenth century to the twentieth century. What Poisson’s chapter demonstrates is that whether it was the Vietnamese court or the French colonial authorities, both relied heavily on prominent local hereditary chiefs (tho ty) for the defence and administration of the border. A key reason for this dependence was that for most Vietnamese (kinh) officials a posting to the border was something to be avoided. Thus, despite repeated efforts by both the Vietnamese court and the colonial authorities to make border postings more attractive, they could never persuade sufficient numbers of Vietnamese officials to work there.17 Only the Vietnamese Emperor Minh Mang, who ruled from 1820 to 1840, attempted to do away with the court’s reliance on tho ty power on the border but, as Poisson shows, he was ultimately unsuccessful. In Chapter 3, Bradley Davis looks at the Vietnamese response to a persistent bandit (thanh phi) problem on its northern border in the 1860s during the reign of the Nguyen Emperor Tu Duc (1848–83). Using both Vietnamese and Chinese sources, Davis argues that there was a wellconceived and rational strategy for tackling the bandit problem, directed – at least in part – by the Vietnamese court in Hue. A central pillar of the court’s approach was to enlist the support of a celebrated Chinese bandithunter, Feng Zicai, to suppress the bandits, highlighting the way in which just as the bandits sought to evade capture by moving backwards and forwards across the border so any solution to the problem demanded a ‘trans-borderland’ approach. Davis’s chapter contributes to a growing body of revisionist literature on the Nguyen dynasty which seeks to rehabilitate the Nguyen from its earlier depiction as simply degenerate and incompetent. As Davis’s chapter shows, such a characterisation seems inappropriate given the concerted and serious efforts by the Nguyen to secure the border. In Chapter 4, Stan Tan looks at the ‘internal frontier’ between the ‘lowland’ Vietnamese state of President Ngo Dinh Diem (1954–63) and the indigenous people of the Central Highlands, focusing on land speculation following the settlement of large numbers of kinh people in the Highlands after 1954. This period has often been depicted simply in terms of a clash between an uncompromising Vietnamese state riding roughshod over indigenous land claims. However, Tan takes issue with this interpretation, painting instead a picture of a more accommodating state concerned about the social and

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political consequences of uncontrolled land speculation and inclined to defend indigenous land claims. As Tan shows, this included incorporating aspects of the traditional Highland land practices into Vietnamese state regulations. In highlighting a more nuanced relationship between the kinh state and ethnic minority people in the Central Highlands, Tan’s chapter echoes a similar theme to that which is found in Poisson’s chapter with its emphasis on the court’s dependence on the non-kinh forces for ensuring stability on the frontier (see Chapter 2). Thus, whatever the state’s rhetoric or nationbuilding proclivities, it would appear on closer inspection that a more accommodation-ist stance towards its indigenous minorities is the norm – if only because conditions demanded it – whether it is nineteenth-century Nguyen court or South Vietnam under President Diem. Adopting a view of the frontier in terms of an intermingling of competing ideas and practices, Miwa Hirono looks in Chapter 5 at the relationship of three actors, namely the Chinese state, the international NGO, Oxfam, and villagers, participating in a community development project in an ethnic minority area close to China’s border with Burma. Based on Hirono’s research, which covered the period 2001–04, it appears that the extent to which competing ideas were exchanged on her ‘virtual frontier’ was limited mainly because the different parties to the community development project had quite different ideas about what was going on. However, as Hirono indicates, such differences in perception are important in terms of creating space for a potentially sensitive international project to go ahead, and thus creating the scope for even a limited process of exchange to take place. One of Hirono’s conclusions is that power should not be seen in zero sum terms. This, of course, is a point which has relevance in respect of most of the other chapters in this book. In Chapter 6, Kyoko Kusakabe looks at the experience of women traders in four border regions between Laos and Thailand, Thailand and Cambodia, and Thailand and Burma (Myanmar) covering the period from the late 1980s to the present. While Kusakabe documents some of the positive experiences of ‘opening up’ for women who work on or close to the border, she also notes that many of these gains have been quite tenuous, not least following the influx of big business and moves by the state to strengthen ‘regulation’ as cross-border trade became more lucrative during the 1990s. The chapter therefore captures well the idea that so-called ‘opening up’ has very often led to a process of increased regulation and not a retreat of the state. The last section of Kusakabe’s chapter discusses some of the strategies women have deployed in a bid to cope with predatory state power. In Chapter 7, Holly High examines the Thai–Lao border as it has been experienced by the residents of Don Khiaw, a village in southern Laos on

Introduction

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18

an island in the Mekong River. In a style which fits well with the book’s emphasis on setting contemporary and historical accounts alongside each other, High begins her chapter by describing how the southern border between Laos and Thailand has taken shape from pre-colonial times to the present. Focusing on one young woman in particular, who, like so many of her generation, is determined to go and work in Thailand, High shows how such westward-leaning aspirations towards Thailand have an important historical context. High then looks at recent ‘cooperation’ between the Thai and Lao governments, highlighting the way in which paradoxically a large part of this cooperation has been directed towards reducing certain kinds of border crossings, particularly what High refers to as the ‘mobility of the marginal’, such as illegal labouring, smuggling, and the activities of anti-Lao government insurgents. The chapter finishes by exploring the effects of such policies on young people in Don Khiaw. Andrew Walker concludes the book (Chapter 8) in a cutting-edge and exciting way, asking whether Mekong frontiers are sites of exception.

Notes 1 I am grateful to Scott Cheshier and Holly High for helpful comments on an earlier draft. 2 For literature which sheds light on the different forms the state can take see Duffield 2007; Gottesman 2002; Hay, Lister and Marsh 2006; Hibou ed 2004; and Nordholt and van Klinken 2007. 3 This research was conducted in June 2007 and has yet to be fully written up. However, it provided a unique opportunity to wrestle with many of the issues highlighted not just in this introduction but in the book as a whole. 4 For writing which highlights some of the problems with the globalisation and the state literature see especially Phillips 2005 and Rosamond 2003. 5 See also Wade 1996 for a similar view. 6 For someone who does something similar see Walker 1999. 7 See also Glyn 2004 for a view which questions the idea that the current round of globalisation is new. 8 See also Walker 1999 for someone who makes a similar point. 9 For discussion of the differing characteristics of Sinicised and Indianised South East Asia see Woodside 1991, Wolters 1979, and Newman 1978. 10 I am aware that other scholars have argued in a similar way. See, for example, Abrams 2006 and Bratsis 2006. However, for the purposes of this chapter I will confine my focus to Mitchell. 11 A failure to take on board such ideas leads to a range of problems in terms of what scholars think studying the state involves. This is particularly the case for political scientists. Mitchell talks about this in terms of the widespread tendency of scholars to scrutinise the state–society boundary as a point of ‘conceptual precision’ rather than as a ‘clue to the nature of the phenomenon’ (i.e. the state) itself (Mitchell 2006: 170). 12 This is obviously a complex issue. However, what Mitchell seems to be saying

10

13 14 15

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17 18

M. Gainsborough is that all states – simply by being states – seek to exercise power in the same way, namely by the production, re-production and policing of the (conceptual) boundary between state and society, public and private etc. Whether different states have different ideological effects is another matter, although my instinct is that they do. For helpful literature, which is asking similar questions see Duffield 2008 and Shenhav and Berda, no date. For a critical view of the ADB in relation to the Greater Mekong Sub-region see Oehlers 2006. For writing on Vietnam which seeks to express what this political economy is like but in a way which the author would argue is analogous for much of the so-called Greater Mekong Sub-region (allowing for national or regional distinctiveness, of course) see Gainsborough 2007a and 2007b. Mark Duffield writes interestingly on this in respect of Burma, arguing that while the contemporary Burmese state owes much to the legacy of its former colonial power, the colonial state left a different legacy from that of the state in the metropole since it did not rule in its colonies in the same way that it ruled at home. See Duffield 2008. Readers familiar with contemporary Vietnam will know that such problems have persisted to the present day, especially in terms of persuading professionally qualified people to work in the countryside. Don Khiaw is not the real name of the village where High carried out fieldwork but has been chosen to protect the identity of her informants.

Bibliography Abrams, Philip (2006) ‘Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State’, in Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta (eds) The Anthropology of the State: a reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 112–30. Beeson, Mark (2003) ‘Sovereignty under Siege: globalisation and the state in South East Asia’, Third World Quarterly 24(2): 357–74. Bratsis, Peter (2006) Everyday Life and the State. Great Barrington Books. Duffield, Mark (2007) Development, Security and Unending War: governing the world of peoples. Cambridge: Polity Press. —— (2008) On the Edge of ‘No Man’s Land’: Chronic Emergency in Myanmar, An independent report commissioned by the Office of the UN RC/HC, Yangon and UNOCHA, New York, January. Gainsborough, Martin (2007a) ‘From Patronage to ‘Outcomes’: Vietnamese Communist Party Congresses Reconsidered’, Journal of Vietnamese Studies 2(1): 3–26. —— (2007b) ‘Globalisation and the state revisited: A view from Provincial Vietnam’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 37(1): 1–18. Glyn, Andrew (2004) ‘The Assessment: How Far Has Globalization Gone?’ Oxford Review of Economic Policy 20(1): 1–14. Gottesman, Evan (2002) Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge: inside the politics of nation building. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 316–35. Hay, Colin, Lister, Michael and Marsh, David (2006) The State: theories and issues. Hampshire: Palgrave and Macmillan.

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Held, D., McGrew, A., Goldblatt, D., Perraton, J. (2000), Global Transformations: politics, economics and culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hibou, B. (ed.) (2004) Privatising the State. London: C. Hurst and Co. Translated from the French by Jonathan Derrick. Leys, Colin (1996) The Rise and Fall of Development Theory. Oxford: James Currey. Mitchell, Timothy (1991) ‘The Limits of the State: beyond statist approaches and their critics’, The American Political Science Review 85(1): 77–96. —— (2006) ‘Society, Economy and the State Effect’, in Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta (eds) The Anthropology of the State: a reader. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 169–86. Newman, Robert (1978) Brahmin and Mandarin: A Comparison of the Cambodian and Vietnamese Revolutions. Working Paper 15, Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University. Nordholt, Henk and van Klinken, Gerry (eds) (2007) Renegotiating Boundaries: local politics in post-Suharto Indonesia. KITLV Press. Oehlers, A (2006) ‘A Critique of ADB Policies towards the Greater Mekong Subregion’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 36(4): 464–78. Phillips, Nicola (2005) ‘Bridging the Comparative/International Divide in the Study of States’, New Political Economy 10(3): 335–43. Rosamond, Ben (2003) ‘Babylon and on? Globalisation and international political economy,’ Review of International Political Economy 10(4): 661–71. Shenhav, Yehouda and Berda, Yael (no date) The Political-Theological and Racial Foundations of Colonial State Bureaucracy: juxtaposing the Israeli Occupation of Palestinian Territories with colonial history. Unpublished manuscript. Stuart-Fox, Martin (1997) A History of Laos. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wade, Robert (1996) ‘Globalisation and its Limits: reports of the death of the national economy are greatly exaggerated’, in Suzanne Berger and Ronald Dore (eds) National Diversity and Global Capitalism. Cornell: Cornell University Press. Walker, Andrew (1999) The Legend of the Golden Boat: regulation, trade and traders in the borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China and Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Wolters, O. W. (1979) ‘Khmer ‘Hinduism’ in the Seventh Century’, in R. B. Smith and W. Watson (eds), Early South East Asia: essays in archaeology, history and historical geography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 427–42. —— (1982) History, Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives. Singapore: Institute for Southeast Asian Studies. Woodside, Alexander (1991) Vietnam and the Chinese Model. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

2

Unhealthy air of the mountains: Kinh and ethnic minority rule on the Sino– Vietnamese frontier from the fifteenth to the twentieth century Emmanuel Poisson

In this chapter, I explore Vietnamese and French rule on the border with China, covering the period from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. What comes across clearly from the sources is that whether it is the Vietnamese court or the French colonial authorities, both struggled to find enough Vietnamese (kinh) officials to work on the border and consequently relied heavily on a number of local hereditary chiefs (tho ty) for the border’s defence and administration. The evidence represents a healthy corrective to the usual argument of assimilation of ethnic minority people by the kinh, suggesting that in fact the opposite process may have occurred. In the chapter, I present material on three ethnic Tay lineages, the Nong, the Ma Doan, and the Vi, showing how their influence on the border persisted despite an assault on their power during the reign of Nguyen Emperor Minh Mang (1820–40) and, some years later, the onset of French colonial rule.1

The ecology of the bureaucracy From the fifteenth to the twentieth century, parts of present-day Vietnam were often referred to as lam chuong. Lam translates as ‘air of the mountains’ and chuong means ‘unhealthy air’ so lam chuong is best translated as ‘unhealthy air of the mountains’. Chuong is also the word for malaria which – more often than not –was very prevalent.2 As a result, it is possible to talk in terms of an ‘ecology of the bureaucracy’ with particular provinces or districts classified according to their climate. Nguyen Trai, for example, highlighted 29 ‘unhealthy’ districts in his Du dia chi (Geography) in 1435 (Nguyen Trai 1976: 240–1). In the nineteenth century, the mountainous districts of Hung Hoa, Thai Nguyen, Tuyen Quang, Lang Son, Cao Bang, Quang Yen and Ninh Binh provinces were categorised according to their climate and their degree of isolation (tl, t. 25: 124–7).

Unhealthy air of the mountains 13

Map 2.1 Northern Dai Viet (seventeenth to eighteenth centuries)

Given the health risks associated with living in mountainous or border areas, working there was not for the faint-hearted. Moreover, for kinh officials operating in culturally and linguistically distinct areas on the Sino– Vietnamese frontier inhabited by ethnic minorities, the work was difficult too. Not surprisingly, many officials were reluctant to be stationed there and absenteeism was rife. Sources in the early eighteenth century show the military governors (tran thu) of Tuyen Quang, Thai Nguyen, Hung Hoa and Lang Son provinces were themselves frequently exhorted not to leave their posts (hc, t. 1: 454, Ngo Cao Lang 1995: 181). According to Minh Mang in 1823, civil servants waiting for an appointment (hau bo) sometimes feigned sickness in order to avoid being appointed to a difficult or unhealthy district (hd, t. 5: 177). During Emperor Thieu Tri’s reign (1841–7), the governor of Son Hung Tuyen, Nguyen Dang Giai, noted that it was commonplace for some district and prefecture heads to abandon their posts to go and live for nearly ten months of the year in the provincial capital (tl, t. 25: 122). Such problems are also clearly evident in the 1850s and 1860s. In 1850, Nguyen Dang Giai, who by now had left his post as provincial governor to

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Map 2.2 Northern Dai Nam (nineteenth century)

be imperial inspector (kinh luoc), proposed that the number of officials in the unhealthiest districts of Nghe An and Thanh Hoa provinces should be reduced in light of chronic absenteeism (tl, t. 27: 237). Meanwhile, Dang Xuan Bang, prefect of Yen Binh in Tuyen Quang province, wrote in 1861 that among prefecture and sub-prefecture officials, only those of Ham Yen and Yen Binh occupied their posts. Bang also tells us that the prefect of Tuong Yen, the mandarin chief of Chiem Hoa district, and the sub-prefects of Vinh Dien, De Dinh, Vinh Tuy and Vi Xuyen, all resided in the provincial capital with security of the main public buildings left in the hands of lowlevel staff and soldiers (Dang Xuan Bang 1923: 173). In some ways the court only had itself to blame for the fact that appointments in border areas were so unpopular since there is evidence that it sometimes used them as a form of punishment, with civil servants regarded as incompetent, corrupt or simply awkward appointed to posts on the border. A rule dating from 1498, for example, said that officers who had been condemned to a military post, but subsequently let off, must be appointed to

Unhealthy air of the mountains 15 an office outside the capital. Those regarded as guilty of less serious offences were appointed closer to the capital, or in districts considered easier to manage. However, the most troublesome or incompetent officials were sent to the border areas (tt, q. 14, f o: 4a). There is also evidence that officials who pretended to be sick in order to get out of their administrative responsibilities or performed poorly, such as failing to collect taxes, were sometimes reassigned to the same post for another six years (tt, q. 12, f f o: 47a).

Strengthening border administration Against the backdrop of persistent absenteeism and a tendency to use the border as a way of getting rid of troublesome or incompetent officials, administration of the border was naturally rather poor. However, this worried the court for whom stability and a degree of control on the border was important. There were a number of reasons for this. First, there was always a danger that instability on the border would spill over into conflict with China, not least by making Vietnam more vulnerable to attack. Second, disorder ran the risk of disrupting trade with China as well as preventing the court from accessing important minerals and other raw materials which were located on, or close to, the border. As a result, successive Vietnamese monarchs also sought to address some of the weaknesses associated with their administration on the border, notably by trying to encourage kinh officials to work there. One approach they tried was to increase civil servants’ wages. Cao Bang province took such a step in 1842. Emperor Thieu Tri specifically justified the move on the grounds that it was a good way of compensating officials posted to remote areas (tl, t. 24: 239–40). Other measures included following hardship posts with a less testing position, and reducing the amount of time an official was required to serve in a difficult area before he could be considered for a less arduous appointment. In the mid-fifteenth century, an official serving in a difficult area could expect to transfer to a position closer to the capital after nine years. However, this was reduced to six years in 1468 if an official performed well (tt, q. 12, f o: 47a). A similar hierarchy of appointments is evident during the period of Nguyen rule. Civil servants waiting for an appointment and officials who had previously only held a low-level post tended to be given positions in isolated or unhealthy areas. Less punishing appointments were made to kinh officials who had passed the regional exams, or who had studied at the College of the Sons of the State (Quoc tu giam) in Hue (tl, t. 25: 124–7). While often the tendency seems to have been to reduce the amount of time officials were required to serve in difficult positions, the court sometimes favoured keeping officials in posts for longer than was usual in the Red River

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Delta, where the norm was to rotate officials regularly. The rationale appears to have been that officials would be better placed to learn the skills needed for a difficult appointment if they remained in the post for longer. In 1844, Emperor Thieu Tri (1841–7) praised the sub-prefect of De Dinh, Nguyen Doan Vu, who has been in the same post for six years, as a model official. Thieu Tri said continuity of service was a good way to ensure stability and to meet the needs of the people (tl, t. 25: 124). From provincial monographs written in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we know that some officials did spend significant periods in a single location. The monograph, ‘Brief Notes on Hung Hoa’ (Hung Hoa ky luoc) compiled in 1855–6 by the chief of Tuan Giao district, Pham Than Duat, contains a wealth of insights about Hung Hoa province, which only someone with extensive experience of the province would know. It includes information about language, fauna and flora, ethnology and administration. Its table of taxation is very complete, including details of taxation on textiles, mining and customs (Pham Than Duat 2000: 121–238 and 619–88). Given the monograph’s comprehensive nature, one suspects it would have become an essential guide for officials newly posted to the province.

The Minh Mang effect? Under the Nguyen, there was a shift towards a more interventionist policy on the border with China. Under Minh Mang, the policy was taken a stage further. The key pillars of Minh Mang’s approach relevant to the administration of the border with China included trying to increase the number of kinh officials (luu quan) over local ones (tho quan); an assault on the power of the local hereditary chiefs (tho ty); and greater emphasis on assimilating minority groups. However, it is far from clear that he was very successful in any of these areas. Minh Mang’s position on assimilating ethnic minorities comes across clearly from his response to a report from a provincial judge in the Mekong Delta. The emperor’s comments provide a clue to the approach likely to have been pursued across the Vietnamese state, including on the frontier with China. In 1838, the Vinh Long provincial judge, Ha Thuc Giao, proposed that kinh civil servants sent to border provinces should learn ethnic minority languages in order to reduce the incidence of misunderstandings due to language. Giao also suggested that ethnic minority children be sent to kinh schools to learn Chu han (classical Chinese) from teachers at the prefecture and sub-prefecture level. While not unsympathetic to Giao’s suggestions, Minh Mang put the emphasis differently, arguing that in keeping with the court’s policy of assimilation, the priority ought to be sending minority children to kinh schools. Minh Mang accepted that officials could learn

Unhealthy air of the mountains 17 minority languages if this improved communication but this was not the mainstay of his policy (tl, t. 20: 197–8). In keeping with his approach, Minh Mang also invited border provinces to select their best ethnic minority children to study at the College of the Sons of the State in Hue. Meanwhile, minority youth who showed an aptitude for combat were sent for military training in the imperial capital. In reality, however, recruitment was slow with too few candidates to satisfy demand (tl, t. 20: 197–8). Minh Mang’s attack on the power of local chiefs on the border occurred in 1829 when he moved to abolish the hereditary nature of tho ty titles in Tuyen Quang, Thai Nguyen, Cao Bang, Lang Son and Hung Hoa. The move was unprecedented. Most of the families, who were big landowners, had links to the court going back centuries. In 1418, for example, a number of these families provided troops to Emperor Le Thai To (1428–42) during the Lam Son insurrection. Around this time, they also coordinated military operations in Lang Son and Cao Bang. It was during Le Thai To’s reign that tho ty titles were made hereditary in the form of a reward by the Emperor for loyal service. Moreover, some of the tho ty had links going back to the Tran dynasty (1226–1440). Not surprisingly, given this pedigree, Minh Mang’s attack on the pre-eminence of the local chiefs on the border with China did not pass without a response. In 1833, the tho ty launched an uprising against the monarch. Although it was ultimately unsuccessful, it by no means marked the end of local power on the border with China (NCBL). To illustrate this, I will now present evidence on three Tay lineages – the Nong, the Ma Doan, and the Vi – which taken together illustrate clearly that despite the assault on their power under Minh Mang, their influence on the border remained.

Table 2.1 Prominent lineages in Lang Son province Lineages

Province of origin

Sub-prefecture

Village

1

Vi

Nghe An

Dong Thanh

Van Phan

2

Nguyen Dinh (1)

Nghe An

–

Duc Quang

3

Ha

Nam Dinh

Giao Thuy

–

4

Nong

Sam Chau

–

5

Hoang Dinh

Nghe An

–

–

6

Nguyen Cong

Nghe An

Thien Loc

–

7

Nguyen Khac

–

–

–

Source: NCBL.

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The persistence of local hereditary power The Nong The Nong family was influential in Thai Nguyen and Tuyen Quang provinces. Its roots can be traced right back to the eleventh century. The economic basis of their political power is not entirely clear but given an early Nong association with a district in Tuyen Quang, which is mentioned in a number of historical accounts, it may have been silver mining and musk (Marini 1666: 44, Baron 1811: 18). At the end of the Le dynasty (1428–1527), the Nong were reliable allies of the monarchy. In 1787, the lord, Nong Van Bat, provided support to Prince Duy Ky in Thai Nguyen province. Prince Duy Ky was the younger brother of Emperor Le Chieu Thong (1787–8). However, another Nong, Nong Van Van, led the resistance against Minh Mang’s assault on tho ty power in 1833, with the result that the Nong family star dimmed. Nevertheless, the family’s fortunes soon recovered as Nong Van Van’s son, Nong Hung Thac, later rose to prominence with the title of protective lord (ong phong). In the 1860s, Emperor Tu Duc (1848–83) appointed Nong Hung On, son of Nong Hung Thac, prefect of Tuong Yen to replace the kinh mandarin and try to assert order on the frontier. The need to assert order followed fallout from the Taiping rebellion against the Qing dynasty in China, which had spilled across the border, as is discussed in Bradley Davis’s chapter in this volume. In appointing Nong Hung On, Tu Duc was clearly reverting to the traditional reliance on the tho ty, which had always characterised court policy apart from during the reign of his grandfather, Minh Mang. Nong Hung On was later succeeded by his brother, Nong Hung Phuc, who rose to be administrator of Tuyen Quang province. Nong Hung Thac, and his sons, Nong Hung On and Nong Hung Phuc, thus provided important protection to the Tay people in the aftermath of the Taiping rebellion. Phuc was eventually succeeded in Tuyen Quang by Nong Hung Tan, himself great-grandson of Nong Van Van, who had opposed Minh Mang in 1833. The Ma Doan The Ma Doan family roots lie in Tuyen Quang province. Although the sources do not allow us to trace the family’s origins very far back, they clearly spanned the length of the nineteenth century, thus clearly surviving Minh Mang’s reforms. In 1802, Ma Doan Dien had a lease on a copper mine he was working in the provinces of Tuyen Quang and Hung Hoa. Some 60 years later, the Ma Doan family still had significant economic holdings in the form of the Tu Long copper mines and two custom posts (Binh Kinh and Dai

Unhealthy air of the mountains 19 Man), all in Tuyen Quang province. In 1896, the family was still prominent, holding political office in Tuyen Quang province’s Chiem Hoa district where the mandarin chief (tri chau) was a Ma Doan Mien and the auxiliary (bang ta) was Ma Doan Thien (Dang Xuan Bang 1923: 187). The Vi The third prominent Tay lineage on the Sino–Vietnamese border during the nineteenth century was the Vi. At the end of Emperor Minh Mang’s reign, Vi The Tuan was appointed mandarin chief of Loc Binh district, a post which he held until 1854. This was despite the fact that – like the Nong – the family had seemingly fallen out of favour with the court during Minh Manh’s reign. It was Vi The Tuan’s son, Vi Van Ly, who was most famous. Ly was elected to the honorary title thien ho in 1853 by seven leading ethnic Tay lineages in Lang Son. During the 1850s and 1860s he played a decisive role in the defence of the border against Chinese incursions, not only fighting in Lang Son province, where his power base lay, but also in the provinces of Cao Bang, Quang Yen and Thai Nguyen. There are records of Ly winning victories in the face of attacks originating from China in 1853, 1854 and 1859 while between 1853 and 1862 he won 24 medals for bravery. Another episode dating from this period also illustrates the prominence of Vi Van Ly at this time. In 1860, the vice-governor of Lang Bang, Bui Huy Phan, was concerned about the lack of security in the border prefectures of Truong Dinh and Truong Khanh, where there was neither a citadel nor an army. As a result, he suggested to Emperor Tu Duc that a reward of a military diploma (doi truong) be given to every thien ho, ba ho, chief and assistant canton managers (chanh tong) if they successfully recruited 50 men to help strengthen the defences. Ly took full advantage of this new decree, recruiting soldiers to occupy the garrison at the military post of Tri Ma. Two years later in 1862, Ly gathered 500 soldiers to retake the citadel of Cao Bang from Chinese rebels under the orders of the governor of Lang Bang. As a result, Ly received from the provincial mandarins a diploma stating he was ‘in charge of the functions of chief of company’ (quyen chanh doi truong suat doi). He then became chief of company (chanh doi truong suat doi) in 1863. In 1876, Ly provided 200 bushels (hoc) of rice to the provincial army, further illustrating his continued power (nav-kl 2515, f os 2–3). Vi Van Ly held a number of other appointments as well, including: subprefect of Yen Bac (1865); prefect of Truong Khanh (1869 and January–June 1878); sub-prefect of Yen Bac (June–November 1874); and sub-prefect of Van Quan (November 1874). In January 1879, Ly was appointed assistant of the provincial mandarins (bang bien tinh vu) while in 1883 he received the title of lecturer of first rank (thi giang hoc si) of the Imperial Academy at Hue.

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Notwithstanding Emperor Minh Mang’s assault on tho ty power, the continued prominence of these three families profiled here illustrates clearly how any set-back they experienced was ultimately only temporary in nature. More than this, the important part played by at least two of these families in the subsequent defence of the northern border with China highlights the way in which the Vietnamese court was never able to dispense with the services of the tho ty even as it sought to encourage more ethnic Vietnamese officials to take up positions on the border. I will now look at administration on the border after colonisation.

Déjà vu under the French It is clear that the colonial power faced many of the same difficulties as the Vietnamese court in its defence and administration of the border. Being appointed to a position on the border was still looked upon as something of a punishment, or as a way of getting rid of troublemakers, under the French. Moreover, the practice of classifying parts of the country according to the climate also continued in the colonial era with some provinces labelled as unhealthy either in part or in their entirety (see Table 2.2). In addition, the colonial authorities encountered many of the same problems faced by the Vietnamese court such as kinh reluctance to serve on Table 2.2 Positions classified ‘unhealthy’ in 1912 Provinces

Positions

Bac Giang

Huu Lung district; Yen The prefecture, Son Dong sub-prefecture

Bac Kan

All of the province

Ha Nam

Lac Thuy district

Hoa Binh

All of the province

Phu Tho

Doan Hung prefecture; Yen Lap and Thanh Son districts

Ninh Binh

Nho Quan prefecture and Yen Hoa subprefecture

Hai Ninh

All of the province except the chief town

Lang Son

All of the province except the chief town

Quang Yen

Yen Bac sub-prefecture

Son La, Lai Chau, Thai Nguyen

All of the province

Yen Bai, Lao Cai

All of the province

Military zones

All positions

Source: NAV-RST 13755, 46464.

Unhealthy air of the mountains 21 the border, absenteeism among serving officials, and a shortage of suitably trained local administrators. One source from 1908 describes how a kinh official in Hoa Binh district in Hung Hoa province ‘resid[ed] in the chief town of the province, and visit[ed] his offices only one or twice a year’ (navrst 14487). Moreover, it is clear from looking at the files of district chiefs that there were never enough ethnic minority graduates from the Collège des Jeunes Thai and the Collège du Protectorat to meet the needs of the colonial administration despite efforts to recruit them. However, like the Vietnamese court before it, the colonial authorities could not afford to ignore poor administration on the border with China and they made periodic attempts to strengthen it, often in ways which were deeply reminiscent of the pre-colonial period. In 1902, for instance, the vice-governor of Thai Nguyen province, Nguyen Ðon Ban, and the French resident of the province, Conrandy, proposed that officials sent to difficult districts should receive faster promotion. The hope was that rather than viewing these appointments as a punishment or disgrace, ambitious officials would use them as a springboard for their careers, or as a way of gaining entry into the school of the hau bo, which trained civil servants (nav-rst 31537). Their proposal was adopted as policy in April 1912, although its impact was patchy to say the least. At the same time, there is strong evidence that the French authorities, like their kinh predecessors, were heavily reliant on the local hereditary chiefs (tho ty) which had played such a pre-eminent role in the defence and administration of the border with China prior to colonisation. The influence of the Nong, Ma Doan and Vi clearly survived the French takeover. Vi Van Ly, for example, was appointed to the post of temporary provincial administrator in April 1886 in order to fill an administrative vacuum during the clash between the French and Chinese armies at Lang Son in February 1885. In March 1887, Ly was appointed temporary vice-governor of Lang Bang after he had assisted the French authorities in the arrest of the antiFrench rebel, Cai Kinh, in the area of Lang Giang. Ly temporarily lost his post in 1888 after he became embroiled in an internal French dispute. However, he was reinstated six years later, by all accounts with his power largely intact (nav-rst 31621). While reliance on the tho ty almost certainly reflected the reality on the ground, there may also have been some Chinese influence here in terms of the models of administration that the French authorities considered. In 1891, the French diplomat cum senior official, Auguste Pavie (1847–1925) forwarded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris extracts from a French translation of a Chinese text on border administration entitled Ethnography of the Foreign People in China (Ethnographie des peuples étrangers à la Chine) drawn from the General Study of Civilisation (Etude générale de la

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civilisation) written by the Chinese scholar, Ma Duanlin (1254–1325) (Ma Duanlin 1317). One of the extracts gave the example of the last emperor of the Shu Han dynasty (221–63), Liu Chan, who ruled in China’s Sichuan province. Liu restored order in the highland areas by giving power to local ethnic minority families, thereby achieving wider political and economic stability. Pavie was clearly trying to signal the relevance of this approach for French Indochina (Fourniau 1983).

Conclusion Whether it was the Vietnamese court or the French colonial authorities, order and stability on the border with China was only possible through an administrative regime which rested heavily on a number of prominent local hereditary chiefs (tho ty) who had held sway on the border for generations. Only Minh Mang sought to dislodge the power of the tho ty. However, as this chapter has sought to show, the evidence suggests that he was unsuccessful. After Minh Mang’s death, the tho ty were reinstated as a central pillar of Vietnamese rule on the border and no Vietnamese emperor ever again attempted such a direct assault on tho ty power. After colonisation, the French authorities quickly realised, in the face of kinh reluctance to be stationed on the border with China, that they too could only guarantee stability and access to key economic resources on the border if they drew upon the local knowledge of the ethnic Tay. That this was the common denominator transcending the shift from Vietnamese to French rule raises interesting questions as to just whose interests were being pursued on the border. Of course, the theory was that the interests of the tho ty and whoever was in power in Hanoi should coincide. However, one suspects that this was not always the case.

Notes 1 The Nguyen monarchs were on the throne in Vietnam from 1802 until 1945, although from the 1850s they had to contend with the expansion of French colonial rule in what later became French Indochina, covering present-day Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. 2 Note that this is a lowland or kinh perspective on the environment. Highlanders often associate ill-health with the lowlands. Thus, while for Vietnamese administrators ill-health was associated with the hills, for hill people the opposite may be true. I am grateful to Holly High for this insight.

Unhealthy air of the mountains 23 Bibliography Baron, S. (1811) ‘A Description of the Kingdom of Tonqueen, 1680’ in General Collection of Voyages and Travels by John Pinkerton, t. 3, pp. 656–707. French translation by H. Deseille, Description du royaume du Tonkin, Hanoi, ideo, (s.d.). Dam Thi Uyen (2000) Huyen Quang Hoa (tinh Cao Bang) tu khi thanh lap den giua the ky xix. Ha Noi: Truong dai hoc su pham Ha Noi. Dang Xuan Bang (1923) Tuyen Quang tinh phu, 1861, in ‘La province de Tuyen Quang’, Revue Indochinoise, xxv (1922), iie section, pp. 135–92, 403–4; xxvi, ire section, pp. 97–126. Fourniau, Charles (1983) Les contacts franco-vietnamiens en Annam et au Tonkin, 1885–1886, thesis, Universite de Haute-Provence. HC (abbreviation), Phan Huy Chu, Lich trieu hien chuong loai chi, 1821, 3 t. Ha Noi: nha xuat ban Khoa hoc xa hoi, 1992. HD (abbreviation), Kham dinh Dai Nam hoi dien su le, 1855, 15 t. Hue: nha xuat ban Thuan Hoa, 1993. Lang Son tho ty su tich – noi tu that toc luoc su. Ha Noi, private collection (owner Nguyen Van Huy; source written in classical Chinese). Launay, A. (2000), Histoire de la mission du Tonkin – documents historiques, 1658–1717. Paris, mep, Les Indes Savantes. Ma Duanlin (1317) Ethnographie des peuples étrangers à la Chine, xiiie siècle, Genève, H. Georg., 2 t., 1876–83, translation by Hervey de Saint-Denys of the Wenxian tongkao books. Marini, G. F. de (1666) Histoire nouvelle et cvrievse des royavmes de Tvnqvin et de Lao. Contenant vne description exacte de leur origine, grandeur & estendue, de leurs richesses & de leurs forces; des moeurs & du naturel de leurs habitants; de la fertilite de ces contrees & des riuieres qui les arrosent de tous costez, & de plusieurs autres circonstances vtiles & necessaires pour vne plus grande intelligence de la geographie. Ensemble la magnificence de la cour des roys de Tunquin & des ceremonies qu’on obserue a leurs enterremens, translated by l.p.l.c.c. Paris, G. Clovzier (text written in seventeenth-century French). NAV-KL (abbreviation), National Archives of Viet Nam, centre no. 1, Ha Noi, registers from kinh luoc collection. NAV-RST (abbreviation), National Archives of Viet Nam, centre no. 1, Ha Noi, files of the résidence supérieure au Tonkin. Ngo Cao Lang (1995), Lich trieu tap ky, 1807–1841, Ha Noi, nha xuat ban Khoa hoc xa hoi. Nguyen Minh Tuong (1993) ‘Chinh sach doi voi dan toc thieu so cua trieu Nguyen nua the ky XiX’, Nghien Cuu Lich Su, 271, pp. 37–44. —— (1996), Cong cuoc cai cach hanh chinh duoi trieu Minh Menh, 1820–1840. Ha Noi: nha xuat ban Khoa hoc xa hoi. Nguyen The Anh (1989) ‘La frontière sino-vietnamienne du xie au xviie siècle’, in P. B. Lafont (ed.) (1989) Les frontières du Vietnam: histoire des frontières de la péninsule indochinoise. Paris, L’Harmattan, coll. Recherches asiatiques, pp. 65–9. Nguyen Trai (1976), Du dia chi, 1435, in Nguyen Trai toan tap. Ha Noi: Vien su hoc, pp. 209–46. NCBL (abbreviation) Nhung cuoc bien loan o Lang Son va Cao Bang tu nam 1850 den nam 1921. Ha Noi, private collection (owner Nguyen Van Huy; source written in classical Chinese).

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Pham Than Duat (2000), Hung Hoa ky luoc, 1856, in Pham Dinh Nhan (ed.), Pham Than Duat toan tap, Ha Noi: Trung tam unesco thong tin tu lieu lich su va van hoa Viet Nam, nha xuat ban Van hoa thong tin, pp. 121–238, 619–88. Poisson, E. (2004), Mandarins et subalternes au nord du Viêt Nam – une bureaucratie à l’épreuve (1820–1918). Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2004. Translated and published in Vietnam (2006): Quan va lai o mien bac Viet Nam – mot bo may hanh chinh truoc thu thac (1820–1918). Da Nang: Nha xuat ban Da Nang. TL (abbreviation), Dai Nam thuc luc chinh bien, 1848–1939, 38 t. Ha Noi: Vien su hoc, nha xuat ban Khoa hoc xa hoi, 1963–77. TT (abbreviation), Dai Viet su ky toan thu, 1697. Ha Noi: nha xuat ban Khoa hoc xa hoi, 1993. Vi gia the pha ky. Ha Noi, private collection (owner Nguyen Van Huy; source written in classical Chinese).

3

Post-Taiping fallout: Nguyen– Qing collaboration in the pursuit of bandits on the border Bradley Davis

As the dynasty which ‘lost Vietnam’ to the French, the Nguyen has often been tarred with the brush of incompetence, and even degeneracy, by historians surveying Vietnam’s last years of independence. While recently the label has come under the spotlight by a new generation of researchers keen to adopt a revisionist tone, it has, perhaps not surprisingly, proved hard to dislodge.1 Contributing to the tide of revisionism, this chapter looks at the Nguyen response to a persistent bandit problem on its northern border in the 1860s during the reign of the Nguyen Emperor Tu Duc (1848–83). Based on extensive research using both Nguyen and Qing sources, I find compelling evidence for the thesis that there was a well-conceived and rational strategy for tackling the bandit problem, directed – at least in part – by the Vietnamese court in Hue. Of course, its tactics were only partially successful but that there was a strategy is beyond dispute. In the 1860s, a central pillar of the court’s approach was to enlist the support of a celebrated Chinese bandit-hunter, Feng Zicai, to suppress Qing bandits, highlighting the way in which just as the bandits sought to evade capture by moving backwards and forwards across the border so any solution to the problem demanded a ‘trans-borderland’ approach. It is the Vietnamese collaboration with Feng Zicai which provides the focus for this chapter.

Fallout from the Taiping In 1864, the Taiping rebellion, which for a period of nearly 20 years had presented the Qing dynasty with one of its most serious challenges, breathed its last (Michael and Chung-li Chan 1966, Jen Yu-wen 1973, Shih 1972, Spence 1996, Reilly 2004). However, the rebellion’s collapse was a messy affair. Local gangs, which had formerly been affiliated to the Taiping, now found themselves without a sponsor and hunted by Qing militia. To evade capture, many of the gangs, referred to as ‘Qing bandits’ by the Vietnamese court, fled across the border into Vietnam where they sought to make a living

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raiding Vietnamese villages and customs posts. Not surprisingly, they soon came to the attention of the Vietnamese court, which feared a loss of order on its northern frontier. One of the earliest reports concerning the so-called Qing bandits comes from 1867. One official in particular, Nguyen Van Vy, who had long experience of tackling lawlessness on the border, wrote in July 1867 to the Ministry of the Military in Hue alerting them of his suspicions that Xie Wenshan, the head of a bandit group from across the border in China, had slipped into Cao Bang province from Guishun county in Guangxi province. Although Vy was almost certainly mistaken since we know from other records that Xie Wenshan had been captured by the Qing in 1863, his report was important nevertheless because it highlighted what was evidently a growing problem (CBTN, 28: 165. Ministry of Military, 11/6/TD20, Echinard 1934: 55–6). Other reports of bandit activity followed thick and fast. In August 1867, just two weeks after Nguyen Van Vy had raised his concerns, the Ministry of the Military received a report from an official in Lang Bang province, Dang Toan, describing how Qing bandits had attacked villages in the districts of Loc Binh and An Bac.2 According to reports, Dang Toan himself led a 300-strong force of local militia in an attempt to repel the bandits (CBTN, 120: 165. Ministry of Military, 26/6/TD20). In October 1868, two officers serving in the Lang Bang wrote to the Ministry of the Military saying that they were increasingly troubled by the situation in the area under their command as a result of frequent raids by Qing bandits (CBTN, 154: 179. Ministry of Military, 27/10/TD21). It was clear that the bandit problem was not going away. One particularly notorious gang believed to have crossed into Vietnam in 1868 was led by Wu Yazhong. In fact, it is probable that Wu was behind at least some of the raids in Lang Bang since he was known to be active in this area. Wu’s gang was also believed to be responsible for raids in Thai Nguyen and Tuyen Quang provinces. Wu claimed to be continuing a rebellion launched by his father, Wu Lingyun, who had opposed the Qing since the 1840s. In 1861, Wu Lingyun declared himself ruler of the Kingdom of Yanling – a rival state within the Qing empire based in Guangxi province. However, Wu did not rule for long because he was killed in a battle with Qing forces in the winter of 1863 (Shao Xunzheng 1955: 169–316, Mo Naiqun 1984: 199–203, Liao Zonglin 2002). Following his father’s death, the younger Wu fled to the western end of Guishun District in Guangxi, where he joined forces with another anti-Qing leader, Xiao Zhangsan. It was when Xiao Xhangsan was captured by the Qing in 1868 that Wu slipped across the border into Vietnam.3

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The enlisting of Feng Zicai In response to the reports of officials in Lang Bang – and no doubt others – the Ministry of the Military drafted an edict in 1868 highlighting the seriousness of the situation on the border. One copy was sent to the governor of Lang Son province, Dang Toan. However, another was sent to Feng Zicai in Guangxi province’s Taiping prefecture. Less than a year later in 1869, Feng crossed into Vietnam at the invitation of the Vietnamese court tasked specifically with tracking down Wu Yazhong. Feng Zicai was a larger than life character. He had previously been a small-time bandit himself so he knew the world of those who lived beyond the law better than most. However, he later switched sides, coming to prominence when he assisted the Qing army pacify a key commercial area in southern-central China, and later fighting rebels in the mountains of Guizhou province. Feng was appointed Military Commander of Guangxi in 1862, a post that he continued to hold while serving in Vietnam. In fact, he did not relinquish the post until 1875 (Hummel 1943: 244–7, Zhao Erxun and Ke Shaomin 1960: 1352–3, Qian Shifu 1980: 2567, Mo Naiqun 1984: 198–205, Wu Guoqiang 1986: 244–56). Shortly before coming to Vietnam, Feng had been battling another bandit group, that of Xie Ba, which was also operating close to the Vietnam–China border. According to reports, Feng’s skill lay in his ability to enlist the support of the local population in the struggle, who in return for monetary and other inducements would alert Feng the moment the bandits turned up in their vicinity (Du Qimo 1988: 5: 8b–10b). He also persuaded people in affected areas to join armed militias to hunt the bandits down. By December 1868, Xie Ba had been squeezed into a small patch of territory near to the border with Vietnam. By early 1869, he was defeated. While in Vietnam, Feng worked closely with another veteran bandit hunter, Vu Trong Binh. Binh was from Quang Binh province and spent the early part of his career near Hue.4 However, showing himself to be an able and versatile administrator, he was quickly promoted.5 In 1854, he was governor of Hung Yen province, where he oversaw the crushing of rebel gangs led by Bi Van Tang and Le Duy Cu. Two years later, as GovernorGeneral of Ninh Thai, Binh reportedly also made a good account of himself, coordinating efforts to deal with the effects of flooding (CBLT 2004: 686). By the time Binh and Feng began working together, Binh was military commander in the now bandit-plagued area of Lang Bang. Feng adopted similar tactics to fighting Wu Yazhong in Vietnam to that which he had employed fighting bandits in China – notably offering inkind and cash inducements to mobilise local people in the fight against Wu (DNTL 1974, vol. 31: 1866–1869: 367). Feng also offered rewards to gang

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members who deserted or agreed to join the struggle against their erstwhile leader. According to one source: ‘Those who had already surrendered and requested to enlist received as compensation one phuong of rice and two lang of silver per month. Those who requested to return to their fields were given two strings of copper coins’ (DNTL 1974, vol. 31: 1866–9: 362). Feng’s methods were remarkably successful. Wu was captured and executed not quite a year after Feng had crossed the border. Moreover, at the height of his struggle against Wu, Feng had under his command ten militia units in Lang Son and 11 in Thai Nguyen (DNTL 1974, vol. 31: 1866–9: 360–2).6 Nevertheless, Feng’s services, which were being paid for by the Vietnamese court, did not come cheap. Vu Trong Binh and another official, Ong Ich Khiem, managed the logistical and financial side of Feng’s operations. Binh’s role was to liaise with the Ministry of Population, which had to approve any request for assistance.7 Khiem, meanwhile, oversaw the distribution of supplies and money to Feng. In August 1869, Binh forwarded to the Ministry of Population a request for a range of items submitted by Feng, including ivory chopsticks, elephant tail-hair, and several varieties of incense (CBTN, 39: 189. Ministry of Population, 19/7/TD22). Later the same month, Feng requested 10,000 pieces of silver. Again, Binh contacted the Ministry of Population on Feng’s behalf (CBTN, 92: 189. Ministry of Population, 23/7/TD22). Once the request was approved, Khiem oversaw the silver’s distribution (CBTN, 92: 189. Ministry of Population, 23/7/TD22).

Bandit problems persist Although Feng soon accomplished the task for which he had been recruited, namely to capture Wu Yazhong, the bandit problem did not go away. This was in part because a number of Wu’s commanders survived his death but also because Wu’s death created space for some of his rivals to flourish. As a result, it was not long before fresh reports of bandit activity started to come in. In May 1869, an investigation by the Ministry of Population following up on a report by a provincial official in Tuyen Quang province, Phan Van Thuat, found that three customs posts had been abandoned after they had come under repeated attack. For over two months, no one defended the posts, and no money was remitted to the provincial government. As a result, the Ministry had no choice but to request that the court waive the tax obligations of the affected customs posts (CBTN, 43: 189. Ministry of Population, 19/7/TD22). Tuyen Quang was not the only province to suffer continued attacks. Hung Hoa province was also hit. In September 1869, the provincial governor, Nguyen Huy Ky, notified the Ministry of Population that Qing bandits had

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descended from the mountains and the rivers to rob and plunder. Like Tuyen Quang province, Hung Hoa’s customs posts were also plundered, prompting Nguyen Huy Ky to request a reduction in the province’s tax contribution, which was also granted (CBTN, 337: 189. Ministry of Population, 21/8/ TD22). With no let-up to the ravages of the bandits in sight, provincial officials took increasingly drastic measures to try to cope with the insecurity. The Hung Hoa provincial governor, Nguyen Huy Ky, for example, reported the physical transfer of the whole customs post in Bao Thang to a safer location. This was said to be to try to encourage people to start depositing taxes again since this had apparently all but stopped, given concerns that people carrying large amounts of money might be targeted by bandits directly. Commenting on the difficulties in Hung Hoa province, Governor Ky specifically blamed bandit leaders Liu Yongfu and Pan Lunsi (aka Huang Chongying) for the attacks on customs posts. Liu and Huang were both rivals of the recently executed Wu (CBTN, 83: 225. Ministry of Population, 29/6/TD23).

Feng Zicai summoned home In December 1869, the Qing Grand Council sent an edict to the governor of Guangxi, Su Fengwen, who was Feng’s immediate superior, stating that since Wu Yazhong had been eliminated, Feng should now return to China along with all his soldiers and any prisoners he had captured. The edict also called on Su Fengwen to do his part to make sure that people did not move freely across the border between Guangxi and Vietnam (TZSL 1937, 272: 7–8). Vu Trong Binh was similarly of the view that Feng’s presence in Vietnam was temporary, emphasising in a communication with the Ministry of the Military that although Qing troops had crossed into Vietnam to pursue Wu, it was ultimately for the Nguyen authorities to defend its population from the bandits (CBTN, 234: 205. Ministry of Military, 18/12/TD22). Binh also seemed keen to prepare for the day when Feng left, acting on Feng’s advice that local militias in Tuyen Quang needed to be bolstered if the province was to be able to defend itself in the future (CBTN, 224: 205. Privy Council, 17/12/TD22). By contrast, the Vietnamese court in Hue appears to have adopted a different tone in respect of Feng’s presence in Vietnam. In February 1870, following a Ministry of the Military investigation into Feng’s activities in Vietnam, a certain Phan Dinh Binh, who had been entrusted with conducting the investigation, made the following comment as part of a larger report: Officials from Guangxi in the Qing Empire have chased bandits into our country. Our border with the Qing has not yet completely settled down.

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This perspective notwithstanding, Feng soon returned to Guangxi in accordance with the Qing edict. Moreover, in 1875, Feng was transferred to Guizhou province. Although Feng coordinated anti-bandit efforts in the 1870s, he did not return to the border area until 1884 when, at 66 years old, he led a combination of Guangxi regulars and volunteers from Qinzhou, his birthplace, against the French army at the Battle of Lang Son. Feng died in 1903, leaving much of his estate for the establishment of a school.8

Conclusion Previous research on Chinese activity on the border with Vietnam has suggested that Qing pursuit of rebels, who had fled across the border following the collapse of the Taiping rebellion in the 1860s, caused no end of difficulty for the Nguyen rulers (Laffey 1969: 26–7). While there is some truth in this, it neglects the fact that through this episode, the Nguyen sought in an inventive way to deploy people like Feng Zicai to their best advantage in order to ensure their own territorial stability and strengthen their fiscal position. Furthermore, as we have seen, even as Feng was recalled to China, the architects of Nguyen policy continued to insist that problems coming from the southern Qing empire should receive the assistance of the Qing empire. This collaborative effort involving the Nguyen and the Qing offers an important corrective to the standard picture of an incompetent and feeble Nguyen state. Assistance from Feng Zicai did not mean a violation of Nguyen sovereignty – far from it. In Vietnam, Feng Zicai’s assistance was viewed as a necessary element in the solution to a trans-borderlands bandit crisis.

Notes 1 For new perspectives on the Nguyen dynasty see Huynh Cong Ba 2005: 5–9, Marr 2000, Lockhart 2001, and Phan Ngoc Lien 2005. 2 Lang Bang equates to present-day Lang Son and Cao Bang provinces. 3 One of Wu’s key allies, Liu Yongfu, had deserted him and led the ‘Black Flag Army’ into northern Dai Nam. For an interesting account of the relationship between Wu Yazhong and Liu Yongfu, see Laffey 1971 and Wong Chi-Keung

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5 6 7 8

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1973. My forthcoming dissertation will place the Black and Yellow Flags into the context of late Nguyen Vietnam and borderlands history. Vu Trong Binh (1808–98) passed his province-level (huong thi) exam in 1834, according to Cao Xuan Duc (CBLT 2004: 685–92). Another source states that Binh took a Cu Nhan degree in 1836 (Dinh Xuan Lam and Truong Huu Quynh 2004: 34–5). See also information about Binh under the entry for Vo Trong Binh in Ha Mai Phuong 1974: 121, footnote 32. ‘Vo’ is an alternate reading of the same character read as ‘Vu’ (Truong Dinh Tin and Le Quy Nguu, 2005: 1187). One source (Dinh Xuan Lam 2004: 34) notes that Vu Trong Binh was a literary man skilled in politics (ong viet nhieu tho van, gioi chinh tri). Feng stationed camps in several villages. Five camps in Dai Tu and Binh Xuyen in Thai Nguyen, three in Cho Chu and Cho Moi in Son Tay, and seven camps in Son Do and Loi Trinh in Tuyen Quang. Ong Ich Khiem (1832–84) would later assist in the capture of the Ly pretender Li Yangcai as well as the rebel bands of both Wu Yazhong and Pan Lunsi. See Dinh Xuan Lam 2004: 236–7. The school is still in operation today in Qinzhou City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Area, China. A large statue of Feng Zicai, hailed as a ‘People’s Hero’ greets visitors and students at the entrance of the campus.

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Nguyen Phan Quang (2005) ‘Viet Nam: tu the ky XX nhin ve the ky XIX’ [Vietnam: A look back at nineteenth century from the twentieth] in Tran Dinh Viet (ed.) Theo Dong Lich Su Dan Toc: Nguyen Phan Quang Tap II, Su kien va tu lieu [Towards a National History, the Collected Papers of Nguyen Phan Quang. Volume II: Events and Materials]. TPHCM: NXB Tong hop TPHCM: 158–63. Nguyen Phan Quang and Vo Xuan Dan (2000). Lich Su Viet Nam tu nguon goc den nam 1884 [The History of Viet Nam: From its Origins to 1884]. TPHCM: NXB Tong hop TPHCM. Pham Van Thu (1912) Trung Hoc Viet Su Toat Yeu [An Intermediate Primer for the Study of Key Events in Vietnamese History]. National Library of Vietnam HanNom Materials Collection R1351, Hanoi. Phan Ngoc Lien (ed.) (2005) Lich Su Nha Nguyen: mot cach tiep can moi [History of the Nguyen Dynasty: A New Perspective]. Ha Noi: NXB Dai Hoc Su Pham. Qian Shifu (ed.) (1980) Qingdai Zhiguan Nianbao [Administrative Tables of the Qing Dynasty]. Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju. Reilly, Thomas H. (2004) The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom: rebellion and the blasphemy of empire. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Shao Xunzheng (ed.) (1955) Zhong Fa Zhanzheng [Materials related to the Sino– French War]. Shanghai: Shanghai Peoples Press. Shih, Vincent (1972) The Taiping Ideology: its sources, interpretations and influences (1967) Reprint, Seattle: University of Washington Press. Spence, Jonathan (1996) God’s Chinese Son: the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan. New York: WW Norton. Taylor, Keith W. (2002) ‘Vietnamese Confucian Narratives’ in Benjamin A. Elman, John B. Duncan and Herman Ooms (eds) Rethinking Confucianism: past and present in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series, pp. 337–69. Tran Trong Kim (1999). Viet Nam Su Luoc. [Historical Sketch of Viet Nam]. Ha Noi: NXB Van Hoa Thong Tin. Truong Dinh Tin and Le Quy Nguu (2005). Dai Tu Dien Chu Nom, Tap 2 [Nom Dictionary, Vol. 2]. Hue: NXB Thuan Hoa. TZSL (1937) Tongzhi Shilu [Veritable Records of the Tongzhi/Dong Tri Reign]. Published in State Council of Manchuria. Da Qing Shilu [Veritable Records of the Qing Empire]. Xinjing. Cited in text as TZSL (1937), volume, page number. Vu Huy Phuc, Pham Quang Trung and Nguyen Ngoc Co (2003) Lich Su Viet Nam: 1858–1896 [History of Vietnam, 1858–1896]. Ha Noi: NXB Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi. Vu Thanh Hang, Tra Ngoc Anh and Ta Quang Phat (eds) (2003) Chau Ban Trieu Tu Duc, 1848–1883 [Memorials of the Tu Duc Court, 1848–1883]. Ha Noi: NXB Van Hoc. Wong Chi-Keung (1973) ‘The Black Flags, a study of their emergence and their confrontation with the French in Tonkin, 1865–1885.’ PhD Dissertation, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Woodside, Alexander B. (1988) Vietnam and the Chinese Model: a comparative study of Vietnamese and Chinese government in the first half of the nineteenth century. Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University. Wu Guoqiang (1986) ‘Lun Feng Zicai’ [A Discussion of Feng Zicai] in Sino–French War Studies Group (ed.) Zhong Fa Zhanzheng Lunwen Ju [Selected Essays on the Sino–French War], vol. 1, pp. 244–56. Nanning: Guangxi Peoples Press. Yi-Faai Laai (1950) ‘The Part Played by the Pirates of Kwangtung and Kwangsi

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Provinces in the Taiping Insurrection.’ PhD Dissertation, University of CaliforniaBerkeley. Zhao Erxun and Ke Shaomin (eds) (1960) Qing Shi Gao [Complete History of the Qing]. Hong Kong, Hong Kong Literary Research Press.

4

The struggle to control land grabbing: state formation on the Central Highlands frontier under the First Republic of Vietnam (1954–63)1 Stan B-H Tan

The two previous chapters looked at state power on the frontier between Vietnam and China, highlighting the way in which at various times the state in Vietnam was dependent both on its indigenous, ethnic Tay population, and on Chinese bandit hunters, for maintaining order on its northern frontier (see Chapters 2 and 3 in this volume). In this chapter, I look at the years of the First Republic (De Nhat Cong Hoa) under President Ngo Dinh Diem, who ruled in the southern half of Vietnam from 1954 until his assassination in 1963. Therefore, not only am I looking at a different time period but I am also examining a frontier internal to the southern Vietnamese state, namely the frontier between lowland – and predominantly ethnic Vietnamese (kinh) Vietnam – and the Central Highlands. The notion of an internal frontier is perhaps less commonly invoked in border studies than that of an international frontier. However, it is nonetheless important, conjuring up a sense that just as what we commonly associate with an ‘international’ frontier is in part imagined so too is the idea that the writ of a state extends uniformly within its own borders. With reference to the particular case dealt with here, it is worth noting that it was only under the First Republic that the Central Highlands and its inhabitants were officially placed under the government of the Vietnamese state with its representative stationed in Dalat. Immediately before this, the Central Highlands was ruled as the Crown Domain under Vietnam’s last Emperor, Bao Dai, although in fact, it came under the jurisdiction of France as the colonial power. In this chapter, I explore the process of frontier formation in the Central Highland province of Lam Dong with reference to three infamous ‘decrees’ issued by the Diem government in 1958 and 1959 in an attempt to control the sale of land between Highlanders and kinh.2 Through an examination of these ‘decrees’ and how they were implemented in Lam Dong province, I seek to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of state formation on the frontier. The chapter proceeds in four stages. I first look at the process of

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state-organised migration and resettlement of kinh in the Central Highlands after 1954, considering how this process has conventionally been understood. I then consider the nature of the traditional land regime which existed in the Central Highlands prior to the period of kinh settlement. In the third section, I examine the implementation of the three ‘decrees’ in Lam Dong province, showing how the simple notion of a clash between an unyielding and unified Vietnamese state, on the one hand, and victimised and wronged Highlanders on the other, does not stand up to scrutiny. In the fourth section, I conclude with some thoughts on the implications of the preceding analysis for an understanding of frontier.

Kinh settlement in the Central Highlands When Vietnam was effectively split into Communist north and nonCommunist south following the Geneva Agreements in July 1954, there were relatively few kinh people living in the Central Highlands. In 1954, kinh only made up about 15 per cent of the estimated 600,000 people in the Central Highlands. However, the situation changed drastically after 1954 as the Saigon government sought to resettle large numbers of mainly kinh refugees that had left the Communist north after the Geneva Agreement, and then later as part of a deliberate frontier settlement policy, known as Dinh Dien (often translated as ‘land development programme’), which began in 1957.3 By July 1957, the government had established 50 resettlement camps populated by over 64,000 refugees in the Central Highlands (Phu Tong Uy Di Cu Ti Nan 1957: 5). The Dinh Dien programme, which also operated in the southern Mekong River Delta, aimed at increasing agricultural production by reclaiming abandoned land and pioneering new land (Viet Nam Cong Hoa 1959, Henderson 1961). By 1959, nearly 44,000 people had been relocated to 37 Dinh Dien centres in the Central Highlands (Henderson 1961: 136). Again, the settlers, who mainly originated from overcrowded coastal provinces in central Vietnam, were predominantly kinh. Beyond the formal, governmentsanctioned processes of migration and resettlement in the Central Highlands, there was also a parallel, informal process, comprising illegal land sales, land grabbing and widespread speculation whereby buyers obtained land at low prices only to sell it on at a much higher price. Mainstream accounts of what happened following the influx of large numbers of kinh into the Central Highlands in this period usually present the situation in terms of a fundamental clash between government-organised settlement programmes and the settlers, on the one hand, and the indigenous Highland inhabitants, on the other. Indeed, in the popular and often academic imagination, President Diem’s regime has gone down in history as having

The struggle to control land grabbing 37 denied land ownership rights to the Highland people. Moreover, a widespread view is that Vietnamese officials – and their American advisors – considered most of the land in the Central Highlands, which at this time was still thickly forested, as ‘empty’ and hence ripe for settlement (Hickey 1957: 2–4, 1982: 19 and 44; Fall 1959: 94; Wickert 1959: 134). Oscar Salemink (2003: 187) succinctly echoes this view when he writes: ‘Montagnard land claims were not recognised, and their lands were confiscated by the state to resettle migrants from the North and the coast.’ In reality, however, the situation in the Central Highlands was much more complex – for three principal reasons. First, mainstream accounts tend to create the impression of a static ‘traditional’ land regime, which only started to change following the influx of Vietnamese settlers and the encroachment of the southern Vietnamese state, introducing as it did ‘modernist’ ideas about private land ownership with all its associated legal and bureaucratic trappings. Second, many accounts tend to imply that the only clash which took place was between the government and the Highlanders, or the settlers and the Highlanders. In fact, there is plenty of evidence of collusion between Highlanders and settlers against the Vietnamese state, and against other Highlanders. As a result, it hardly appears that the traditional land regime was static or sacrosanct in the eyes of the original inhabitants. Third, the government seems to have been much more aware of, and sensitive to, the traditional land regime operating in the Central Highlands than mainstream accounts would suggest. This was partly because the authorities were concerned about the potentially explosive political and social consequences of allowing uncontrolled kinh migration in the Central Highlands. Not only did the authorities fear social unrest but also, given the political climate, that any popular dissatisfaction might be exploited by the Communists. Furthermore, like any self-respecting state, the Saigon government did not want its writ ignored in the Highlands, or to see its officials flagrantly abuse their public positions at the expense of ordinary people, which itself also risked a political backlash. According to this interpretation, the infamous three ‘decrees’, seen by many as denying ownership rights to the Highlanders, were in fact fundamentally about the state trying to prevent land grabbing rather than stripping the Highlanders of their land rights. In addition, a close look at some of the less well-known government rulings of the day clearly illustrates the way in which government land policy was not being made in a vacuum but was itself influenced by local Highland custom. This again conflicts with more conventional accounts. Of course, there was a traditional land regime and it came under attack, causing disaffection and upset. However, the usual characterisation of the Vietnamese state simply riding roughshod over indigenous land practice

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leaves out an important part of the story. If we are to move towards a nuanced account of state formation on the frontier, it is essential that such details are brought back into view. I now turn to the question of the nature of the traditional land regime in the Central Highlands. Given what I have said about the willingness of Highlanders to exploit their fellow Highlanders for private gain, it should be remembered that this is probably a somewhat idealised account. Actual practice is likely to have deviated from this somewhat, even before the arrival of large numbers of kinh settlers.

The traditional land regime in the Central Highlands On the eve of the influx of kinh settlers in the Central Highlands, most of the old inhabitants were still practising swidden agriculture, as they had been for generations.4 Swidden societies seldom give rise to elaborate political formations, with the village usually being the highest level of ‘political’ organisation (Dang Nghiem Van 2001: 614). The village was – and even now still is – led by a group of elders or ‘men of prowess’, who are perceived to be spiritually potent, or imbued with wisdom about both the living and spiritual worlds (Condominas 1957, Bui Dinh 1963: 11–15 and 18–21, Wolters 1982: 6–9). Sometimes, one or more of such ‘men of prowess’ would gain sufficient reputation to have influence across a number of villages within a particular area. However, there was no centralised or overarching form of political organisation under this traditional system that could lay sovereign claims over all Central Highland people. The village elders were usually also guardians of oral customary laws that regulated behaviour of the people within the village. Records of village territories were preserved in oral verses. Diep Dinh Hoa (1993: 37) records one such oral verse specifying the land area of the Mnong Gar of Sarluk: Demarcation of Sarluk forest South from Mei river to Dam Blong river East from the saddle called Blach to Car Her brook North of Ro’Bak forest to Lieng Bong and old forest Pan Tlang West of old forest Pan Tlang to river Ro’beh next to river Krong.5 Even to this day, these verses are generally known only within the village itself. In cases of inter-village disputes, representatives would recite such verses and identify territorial markers such as particular trees, stones, hills and streams to verify their claims to land (Bui Minh Dao 2000: 105). In the past, it was not uncommon for territorial disputes to erupt into inter-village warfare.

The struggle to control land grabbing 39 Within the confines of their territory, villagers rotated their fields as required by the practice of swidden agriculture. Within this defined area, the village itself usually stayed put. At times, the villagers would temporarily relocate and set up makeshift living quarters closer to the fields on which they were working but they would return to the more established village when these fields were left fallow. Within the selected swidden area, each household was assigned specific plots. These plots of land were passed down from generation to generation. The plots could be transferred among villagers but not to outsiders. Transfer of land use rights among villagers was in turn governed by village custom. Often, it involved a ritual process of witness by other villagers from across different generations, including the young, adults and the elders. Land was not considered as private property because it was only meant for temporary swidden use and only then with the blessings of the spirits. In this sense, it is perhaps more appropriate to see ‘land rights’ in traditional swidden societies as involving ‘custodial responsibilities’. Thus, there is a big difference between this system and that operating in lowland kinh villages in that, among Central Highland communities, village territory was not restricted simply to the ‘residential’ village or the particular fields that were being cultivated. Also, Highland villages were not delineated by definite boundaries as in wet-rice agriculture nor were land details recorded in village land registries (dia ba) as was normal practice in lowland kinh settlements. Instead, village land in the Highlands included cultivated land, forests deemed as swidden grounds, forests perceived as sacred and therefore never cleared, fallow fields, and burials grounds. In the next section, I look at the situation which ensued in Lam Dong province in the wake of significant movement into the area by kinh settlers and land speculators.

The story of the infamous three ‘decrees’ in Lam Dong province ‘Decree 1’: Official Letter 3169 On 4 September 1959, the head of Lam Dong province, Huynh Cong Tinh, issued a public notice calling on anyone who had purchased land from Highlanders during the period from 1954 to 1958 to submit their land sale documents to the Provincial Administration Office in Lam Dong. According to the notice, this was to facilitate the Saigon government’s ongoing investigation into land sales between kinh and Highlanders. All documents must be submitted to the provincial authorities within two months, the notice said, otherwise they ‘will not be eligible for consideration’ (PTTDeNhat, File no. 13604).

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It is clear in retrospect that the notice did not have quite the desired effect since on 28 July 1960 – about ten months after the notice had come out – Huynh Cong Tinh issued a second notice, granting a ‘final’ one-month extension to all parties who had purchased lands from Highlanders, urging them to submit their land sale documents to the provincial authorities without delay. Highlighting what had perhaps been exploited as a loophole during the intervening period, the second notice emphasised that whether a person had purchased land directly from Highlanders or indirectly (i.e. buying it from someone else who had bought it from Highlanders) did not matter. They were all to submit their land sale documents to the relevant provincial authorities without delay (PTTDeNhat, File no. 13604). In late August 1958, Huynh Cong Tinh, like all province chiefs in the Central Highlands, received a request from President Diem’s Office to compile a comprehensive record of all land sales between Highlanders and kinh, and to investigate the nature of these sales. This request originated from the first of the so-called three decrees, Cong Van (official letter) 3169-BDT/ VP issued by President Diem on 26 August 1958.6 Citing concerns about ‘improper and private gains’ resulting from land sales between Highlander and kinh, Cong Van 3169 announced a ban on all future sales between kinh and Highlanders until further notice. The backdrop to the issuing of Cong Van 3169 was that the Ministry of Land and Land Reforms (henceforth MLLR) had discovered numerous cases where people buying land had bypassed local verification procedures at the provincial or sub-provincial level, and instead were registering their land purchases with the Land Registrar in Saigon or Dalat. This problem existed across the Central Highlands, the MLLR found, but it was especially acute in Lam Dong province. Also of concern to the authorities at this time was the high incidence of land speculation occurring in the Central Highlands. According to the MLLR, kinh people had been buying land from Highlanders by contriving schemes designed to induce ‘quick and easy profits’ (mau le va de kiem an). Typically, speculators approached Highlanders who had claims to certain pieces of land, and bought the land at very low prices. Alternatively, speculators searched for good public lands that were either unoccupied or located on abandoned French plantations. They then collaborated with willing Highlanders who were paid to pretend to be the owners, or the descendants of the original owners, with the Highlanders in return agreeing to ‘sell’ the land to the Vietnamese speculators. After this, the speculators would seek to complete the paperwork at the relevant government offices in order to make themselves the new legal owners. Much of the land obtained in this way was sold at very low prices. This included when the Highlanders had genuine claims to the land and were

The struggle to control land grabbing 41 not just collaborating with kinh speculators for quick profits. In one investigation concerning the sale of land by Highlanders in a village in Lam Dong province in October 1955, a certain Nguyen Van Vinh was found to have paid only 4000 piasters for about 16 hectares of land situated close to the Km 184 marker on National Highway 20. A year later, the same Nguyen Van Vinh bought about 19 hectares of land from the same villagers for a slightly higher price. A committee sent to investigate Mr Vinh’s purchases found that the plots of land were of very good quality, and that the former plot of land alone was worth an estimated 53,885 piasters! Underlining the murky nature of these land deals, the investigating committee was unable to determine with any degree of certainty whether the villagers had actually sold the land to Mr Vinh (PTTDeNhat, File no. 15236). ‘Decree 2’: Decree 581 On 12 December 1958, while the investigation into land sales in the Central Highlands precipitated by Cong Van 3169 was still ongoing, President Diem’s Office issued the second of the so-called three decrees, namely Decree 513-a/DT/CCDD. Decree 513 stated the following: 1

2 3

All land sales or transfers between Highlander and kinh compatriots, regardless of land size area, must seek the prior approval of the President. All prior stipulations contrary to this decree are abolished. Minister of Interior, Minister of Land and Land Reforms, and all Chiefs of Province are tasked to implement this decree. (PTTDeNhat, File no. 16776)

Thus, rather than outrightly denying land ownership rights to Highlanders – as pointed out by critics of the First Republic’s land policy – Decree 513 simply forced all land sales involving Highlanders to undergo a stringent checking process overseen by the Ministry of Interior, the MLLR, and the provincial authorities before ultimately requiring approval by President Diem. The timing and content of Decree 513 were influenced by a report by the Inspector-General for Civil Administration (Tong Thanh Tra Hanh Chanh), Le Tan Nam. Mr Nam had been ordered to investigate land sales in the Central Highlands following the issue of Cong Van 3169. He reported in person to President Diem sometime in late 1958, issuing a report which was circulated internally in January 1959. Mr Nam’s findings added more fuel to the fire insofar as they confirmed the picture of widespread land grabbing and speculative land purchases in

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the Central Highlands at this time. In his report, Mr Nam identified 102 cases of questionable land sales between Highlanders and kinh in Lam Dong province alone between 1955 and 1957. Moreover, he identified a further 85 cases in the province in 1958, suggesting the problem was escalating rather than abating at this stage. The report also argued that while Highlanders who engaged in such sales rarely suffered any harm as a result of their actions – either because they had simply inherited the lands or had been incited by kinh buyers to pretend to be the owners – the trend could well cause problems for the government because the land was falling into private hands and thus would be beyond its control. Furthermore, Mr Nam said that the government could find itself in a difficult position if the new landowners asked for official recognition of their ownership without being able to provide the appropriate documentation showing how the land had come into their possession. More explosive still, Mr Nam mentioned by name in his report a large number of senior officials who he said had a hand in the land speculation (nhung tay vao viec dau co dat dai nay). These included: • • • • •

the former Chief of Province of Lam Dong, Ho Tran Chanh, who had since moved to Phan Rang; the incumbent Chief of Province of Lam Dong, Le Ta; the former Chief of District of Blao, Nguyen Van Quang (by this time in the Ministry of Interior); the former Chief of District of Blao, Le Van Lan (by this time incumbent Deputy Chief of Province of Lan Dong); and the incumbent Chief of the Land Registry Bureau of Lam Dong Province, Nguyen Xuan Hong.

According to one informant on whom Mr Nam had relied, these officials participated in dubious land sales in one of three ways: either they took advantage of their official positions by recommending relatives and friends to buy the lands from the Highlanders; or, they earned commissions by acting as middlemen for land sales; or they purchased land for themselves, often at a very low price, before later reselling it at a much higher price. There were also several cases where plantation concessions held by French owners had been submitted for return to the government but were instead appropriated by officials. While Mr Nam said it was difficult to gather the kind of evidence needed to bring people to justice, the Mayor of Dalat cum Director of Bureau of Police and Public Security in the Central Highlands (Nha Canh Sat va Cong An Cao Nguyen Trung Phan), Tran Van Phuoc, was ordered to start covert investigations into the land sales. Mr Phuoc was specifically told to take care not to raise the suspicions of the suspects, many of whom were

The struggle to control land grabbing 43 serving officials – as we have seen. Moreover, when Huynh Cong Tinh was appointed as Lam Dong provincial chief, replacing Le Ta who was himself being investigated, one of his first tasks was to implement Cong Van 3169 (i.e. the first of the three decrees). He also started an investigation into the activities of his deputy, Le Van Lan. Based on Tinh’s findings, it appears that land sales were concentrated in three geographical areas. The first concerned the parcels of land confiscated from plantation concessions belonging to the former Empress of Annam, Nam Phuong (Emperor Bao Dai’s first wife); the second concerned land appropriated from the Centre for Agricultural Produce Experiments in Bao Loc; and the third concerned about 194 hectares of land located around the Table 4.1 Examples of land sales between Highlanders and kinh in Lam Dong province contained in Huynh Cong Tinh’s report Seller

Buyer

K’Hoi, K’Brong, Ly Thi Mai K’Brieu, K‘Te, K’Dut, K’Briu, K’Breo Brenh, K’Brui, K’Dieu, K’Bras

Location

Land Area Piasters (hectares)

Km 179 National Highway (NH) 20

29.25

$11,700

K’Khoa, K’Briu, K’Bret

Ha Xuan Dieu Near Km 178 NH 20 8.9

$2000

K’Brin, K’U, K’Thiu

Nguyen Thi Tanh

Near Km 229 NH 20 10

$1500

K’Toc, Briu, Broi, Teo Tran Van Tri

Across Km 182 NH 20

$6400

K’Kras, Breu, Brong, Te, Dieu

Between Km 178 & 9.36 179 NH 20

$3744

Between Km 226 & 4 227 NH 20

$1800

Nguyen Duc Bich

K’Brop, Broi K’Yang, K’Nhui Nong, Gih, Beoh, Brong, Briu, Sio*

15

K’Nyet, Bron, Leu, Dung

Touneh Phan Km 6 Inter17.1 Provincial Highway No. 8 between Dilinh and Ban Me Thuot

$3000

K’Lan, Dek, Deo, Srang, Lun, Tho

Pham Thi Lanh

$5000

Km 155 NH 20

29.3

* This group of people sold in total four parcels of land totalling 32 hectares to different group of buyers. Source: PTTDeNhat, File no. 13604.

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Km 182 marker on National Highway 20, purchased by Le Van Lan, Le Ta, and their relatives and friends (PTTDeNhat, File no. 13604). Tinh’s investigations revealed that Le Van Lan had rushed through the approval of many applications for land sale certification and even doctored the dates of several files to make it look as if they had been submitted before Cong Van 3169 has been issued. The total land area of the sales approved by Le Van Lan came to about 1075 hectares. In January 1959, some of the land sale applicants brought their documents to be registered at the Land Registrar in Dalat but they were unsuccessful. However, three of the applicants, namely Trieu Van Yen (application no. 128), Tran Thi Duc (application no. 140) and Luu Thi Huong (application no. 150), brought their documents to the Land Registrar in Saigon which duly registered them as the legal owners. Nevertheless, worried that the government in Saigon would be suspicious about the large number of files that were still awaiting verification by the Registrar, Le Van Lan and Le Ta instructed the clerks at the provincial administration to erase the entries from the filing records in the provincial document registry book (PTTDeNhat, File no. 13604). When Tinh submitted his report, he had already compiled details of all the suspect land sales that he was aware of. He had the names of all the sellers and buyers of the land, locations and areas of the land parcels, origins of the land parcels, and résumés of the people involved (see Table 4.1 for examples). The land sales investigated dated from the beginning of 1955. Most were between Highlanders and kinh. There were 13 cases of transactions between kinh and kinh although they had begun with an initial purchase from Highlanders. There were two cases of land sales between Highlanders and Highlanders; and two cases between French nationals and Highlanders (PTTDeNhat, File no. 13604). ‘Decree 3’: Circular 981 On 28 May 1959, with covert investigations into illegal land sales still ongoing, the Minister of Finance issued the third of the three famous ‘decrees’, Circular (Thong Tu) 981-BTC/DC. Circular 981 specifically advised the MLLR that 152 cases of land sales in Lam Dong province were ‘ineffective’ because ‘Highlander compatriots only have user rights but not ownership rights to the land’.7 Continuing, the Ministry of Finance proposed that MLLR form a committee to re-evaluate the land sales on a case by case basis. The Ministry of Finance’s suggestion was that lands which had not yet been exploited should be reclaimed as public lands.

The struggle to control land grabbing 45 A fourth decree? Less than a month later, the MLLR responded with the issue of Circular 25-BD/TT, dated 15 June 1959. Circular 25 was aimed at all provincial chiefs in the Central Highlands and sought once and for all to regulate land sales by Highlanders. Given the emphasis in most scholarly accounts on the so-called three decrees, Circular 25 appears to have been rather overlooked. However, it is important for a number of reasons. First, it appears to contain de facto recognition that the Highlanders were the rightful owners of most of the land in the highlands even if the de jure position was left vague, perhaps deliberately. This de facto recognition had already influenced the way Dinh Dien was carried out and reflected the government’s extreme unease over other kinds of ‘land use’ outside its official programmes. Without clear de jure recognition of the status of landownership rights by Highlanders, however, the land question remained ambiguous. The unwillingness to clarify the position was probably because, as the minister for MLLR admitted, if the government recognised all such claims de jure, the Highlanders would officially claim most of the land in the Central Highlands. Second, like Decree 513, Circular 25 made it clear that Highlanders were permitted to sell land as long as they adhered to a rigorous process of checks and balances. Thus, Circular 25 stated that all land sale applications must be made public. In addition, notices of the proposed land sale must be posted for a period of one month prior to the completion of the sale at the provincial, district, commune and village administration offices where the parcel of land was located. During this one-month period, any complaints or objections to the proposed land sale must be submitted to the provincial administration for further investigation. Third, and perhaps most important, Circular 25 seems to demonstrate significant bending to local custom in the Central Highlands on the part of the Saigon government in terms of how land sales between Highlander and kinh were to be regulated. Specifically, Circular 25 called for the establishment of a land survey committee (Uy Ban Kham Dat) to oversee the land sale process. The committee membership included the Chief of Province or an appointed representative, the Chief of the Provincial Land Registrar, the Highlander Chief of District (Quan Truong Thuong), a representative of the Commune Council where the land parcel was located, the provincial administrative secretary, and the relevant landowner. However, Circular 25 also stated that the committee membership should include a notable of the Highlander community (than hao nguoi Thuong) (PTTDeNhat, File no. 11261). This was very reminiscent of the traditional land transfer custom practised in the Central Highlands, which was referred to earlier in the chapter. For example, the Chru in Dran were known to invite representatives of three generations

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of people in the village to verify and bear witness to the validity of the transfer of land from one person to another (Touneh Han Dang 1972: 196). In contrast to Central Highland officials, village notables were not appointed by the government.

Conclusion While it is true that the Diem government did not pass any legal resolutions to affirm Highlander land rights according to their traditional customs, it did seek to take account of Highlander land claims when implementing its policies in the Central Highlands – as we have seen. Moreover, officials were repeatedly reminded about the sensitivity of the land issue in the Highlands and the government adopted a strict stance against land settlement and land appropriation outside its official programmes. As a rule of thumb, Highlanders were generally recognised as the de facto owners of the lands in the Central Highlands. When Circular 25 introduced procedures for land sales between Highlander and kinh, it effectively brought this de facto recognition to the fore. Circular 25 also replicated practices of verification and witness which formed part of the indigenous land regime in the Central Highlands. Thus, rather than there being a severe clash between one land regime and another, it appears that the land question was managed in a more accommodation-ist manner than is often thought. Without doubt, Highlanders suffered losses in the process of state formation on the frontier. However, there were no outright attempts at dispossession carried out by the state. The Diem government tried to prevent further land loss by the Highlanders because of land grabbing, introducing a series of tough measures designed to stop land transactions occurring outside official programmes. Government critics interpreted these measures as a denial of Highlander landownership rights but as this chapter has demonstrated this is a distortion.

Notes 1 This chapter was completed with the support of a National University of Singapore FRC Grant (WBS No. R-117-000-012-112/133) for the research project ‘Beyond Hills and Plains: Rethinking State, Society and Economy in the South East Asian Massif’. 2 The word ‘decree’ is placed in inverted commas because although the three government rulings are referred to as the ‘three decrees’, they are not actually all decrees. One is a decree but the other two are an official letter (cong van) and a circular (thong tu). 3 ‘Land development programme’ does not quite capture the depth of meaning contained in the term ‘Dinh Dien’. Literally, the term ‘Dinh Dien’ means

The struggle to control land grabbing 47

4 5 6 7

‘nourishing’ (Dinh) the ‘rice fields’ (Dien), or ‘cultivating the land’. The terms ‘Dien’ and ‘ruong’ usually refer to only one type of agricultural land use, ‘wet rice fields’. Historically, the term ‘Dinh Dien’ refers to agricultural settlements formed by peasants on uncultivated or under-cultivated lands with the objective of bringing these lands into active agriculture production, or more specifically, wet rice production (lam ruong). Unable to find a better rendering in English, I simply refer to this policy as the Dinh Dien programme instead of Land Development Programme. I also refer to the Dinh Dien settlements simply as Dinh Dien settlements or centres instead of Land Development Centres. Swidden agriculture is also referred to as ‘shifting cultivation’ or more crudely ‘slash and burn’ agriculture. Translation from the Vietnamese is by the author, although the verse was originally in Mnong Gar. PTTDeNhat, File no. not recorded by author but a photocopy of document is in the author’s possession. As for note 6.

Bibliography Anonymous (1974) The Montagnards of South Vietnam. London: Minority Rights Group. Ban Chap Hanh Dang Bo Tinh Kontum (2002) Lich su dang bo tinh Kontum: Tap II 1975–2000 [Party Committee History of Gia Lai Province: Volume II 1975– 2000]. Da Nang: Nha Xuat Ban Da Nang. Be Viet Dang, Chu Thai Son, Vu Thi Hong and Vu Dinh Loi (1982) Dai cuong ve cac dan toc Ede, Mnong o Dak Lak [General Outline of Ede and Mnong Ethnic Groups in Dak Lak]. Ha Noi: Nha Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi. Bui Dinh (1963) Duong Len Xu Thuong [Road to the Highland Region]. Viet Nam Cong Hoa: Bo Cong Dan Vu. Bui Minh Dao (2000) Trong trot truyen thong cua cac dan toc tai cho Tay Nguyen [Traditional Cultivation of Autochthonous Ethnic Groups in the Western Plateau]. Ha Noi: Nha Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi. Bui Minh Dao, Vu Dinh Loi and Vu Thi Hong (1999) ‘Thuc trang su dung dat o mot so tinh Tay Nguyen hien nay’ [Situation of Land Use in a Few Provinces of the Western Plateau at Present]. Bao Cao Tong Hop De Tai. Vien Dan Toc Hoc, Trung Tam Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi Va Nhan Van Quoc Gia. —— (2000) So huu va su dung dat dai o cac tinh Tay Nguyen [Ownership and use of Land in the Western Plateau Provinces]. Ha Noi: Nha Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi. Bui Xuan Dinh (1998) Huong Uoc va Quan Ly Lang Xa [Village Customs and Village Administration]. Ha Noi: Nha Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi. Chau Khac Chuong, Ngo Duc Thinh and Nguyen Huu Tri (eds) (1990) Van de phat trien kinh te xa hoi cac dan toc thieu so Dac Lac [The Issue of Social-Economic Development of Ethnic Minorities of Dac Lac]. Ha Noi: Nha Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi. Condominas, Georges (1951) ‘Aspects of a Minority Problem in Indochina’. Pacific Affairs 24(1): 77–82. —— (1957) We Have Eaten the Forest: the story of a Montagnard village in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. New York: Hill and Wang. Translated by Adrian Foulke in 1977.

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Cuu Long Giang & Toan Anh (1974) Cao Nguyen Mien Thuong [High Plateau of the Highland Region]. Saigon: Viet Nam Chi Luoc. Dang Nghiem Van (2001) ‘So huu dat dai o Tay Nguyen’ [Land Ownership in the Western Plateau]. In Dang Nghiem Van (ed.) Dan toc, Van hoa, Ton giao [Ethnicity, Culture, Religion]. Ha Noi: Nha Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi. —— (2002) ‘Van de dat dai o cac tinh Tay Nguyen’ [The Land Problem in the Western Plateau Provinces]. In Ngo Duc Thinh and Vo Quang Trong (eds) Mot so van de phat trien kinh te xa hoi buon lang cac dan toc Tay Nguyen [A Few Issues on Economic-Social Development of Villages of Ethnic Groups in the Western Plateau]. Ha Noi: Nha Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi. Diep Dinh Hoa (1993) ‘Dat dai va huyet thong: Vai nhan xet ve quyen so huu dat rung qua chuyen Ho Phoc (Yao Pul Phok) cua nguoi Mnong Gar – Tinh Dac Lac’ [Land and Lineage: Some Observations on Forested Land Ownership Through the Tale of Phok Family of the Mnong Gar People in Dac Lac]. Nghien Cuu Lich Su [Historical Research] 2: 31–48. —— (2000) Nguoi Viet o dong bang Bac Bo [Viet People in the Northern Delta]. Ha Noi: Nha Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi. Evans, Grant (1992) ‘Internal Colonialism in the Central Highlands of Vietnam’, Sojourn 7(2): 274–304. Fall, Bernard (1959) ‘Commentary on Harnett’ in Richard Lindholm (ed.) Viet-Nam: the first five years. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. —— (1966) Viet-Nam Witness 1953–66. New York: Praeger. Guerin, Matthieu, Andrew Hardy, Nguyen Van Chinh and Stan B-H Tan (2003) Des montagnards aux minorites ethniques: Quelle integration nationale pour les habitants des hautes terres du Viet Nam et du Cambodge?. Paris: L’Harmattan; Bangkok: IRASEC. Hardy, Andrew (2003) Red Hills: migrants and the state in the Highlands of Vietnam. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Hautecloque-Howe, Anne De (1985) Nguoi Ede: Mot xa hoi mau he [Ede People: A Matrilineal Society]. Ha Noi: Nha Xuat Ban Van Hoa Dan Toc. Translated by Nguyen Ngoc and Phung Ngoc Cuu in 2004. Henderson, William (1961) ‘Opening of New Lands and Villages: The Republic of Vietnam’s Land Development Program’ in Wesley Fishel (ed.) Problems of Freedom: South Vietnam since independence. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe. Hickey, Gerald (1957) Preliminary Research Report on the High Plateau (PMS). Saigon: Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group. —— (1967). The Highland People of South Vietnam: social and economic development. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation. —— (1971) Some Recommendations Affecting the Prospective Role of Vietnamese Highlanders in Economic Development. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation. —— (1982) Free in the Forest: ethno-history of Vietnam’s Central Highlands, 1954–76. New Haven: Yale University Press. —— (1993) Shattered World: adaptation and survival among Vietnam’s Highland Peoples. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. —— (2002) Window on a War: an anthropologist in the Vietnam conflict. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press. Jacobs, Seth (2004) America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem: religion, race and U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia, 1950–57. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

The struggle to control land grabbing 49 Jamieson, Neil (1993) Understanding Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kerkvliet, Benedict (1997) Land Struggles and Land Regimes in the Philippines and Vietnam during the Twentieth Century. Amsterdam: CASA. Labrie, Norman Charles (1971) ‘Fulro: The History of Political Tension in the South Vietnamese Highlands’. Master Thesis, University of Massachusetts. Ladejinsky, Wolf. ‘Agrarian Reform in The Republic of Vietnam’ in Wesley Fishel (ed.) Problems of Freedom: South Vietnam since independence. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe. Montgomery, John D. (1959) Cases in Vietnam Administration: Truong Hop Hanh Chanh Viet Nam. Saigon: Michigan State University Advisory Group. n.a. (1958) ‘Cuoc kinh ly cua Tong Thong Cong Hoa tai Cao Nguyen Trung Phan’ [The President of the Republic’s Visit in the Central Highlands]. Chan Hung Kinh Te 62: 6–7, 14–15 and 33. Ngo Duc Thinh (ed.) (2001) Tin nguong va van hoa tin nguong o Viet Nam [Beliefs and Cultural Beliefs in Vietnam]. Ha Noi: Nha Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi Hoc. Ngo Duc Thinh (2003) Tim hieu luat tuc cac toc nguoi o Viet Nam [Understanding Customary Laws of Ethnic Groups in Vietnam]. Ha Noi: Nha Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc Xa Hoi. Ngo Duc Trach (1968) ‘Dan so dong bao Thuong Du Bac Viet di cu tai mien nam nuoc Viet’ [Northern Highlander Migrant Population in Southern Viet Nam]. Nguyet San Thuong Vu 15: 48–50 and 56. Nguyen Trac Di (1969) Tim hieu phong trao tranh dau FULRO (1958-69) [Understanding the Political Struggle Movement of FULRO (1958-69)]. Saigon: Bo Phat Trien Sac Toc. —— (1972) Dong bao cac sac toc thieu so Viet Nam (Nguon Goc va Phong Tuc) [Vietnamese Ethnic Minority Compatriots (Origins And Customs)]. Saigon: Bo Phat Trien Sac Toc. Nguyen Van Can (1966) ‘Van de kien dien dat dai canh tac cho dong bao Thuong’ [The Issue of Establishing Cultivation Land for Highlander Compatriots]. Tap San Thuong Vu [Highland Affairs Periodical] 1: 40. Nha Ky Thuat (1957) ‘Nhung dia diem da duoc lua chon de khai thac tai vung Banmethuot va Pleiku trong mot cuoc tim dat cua phai doan chuyen mon nha ky thuat’ [The Various Sites That Have Been Selected For Development in the Banmethuot and Pleiku Regions During a Land Search Trip by a Specialist Delegation from the Bureau for Technology]. Chan Hung Kinh Te [Economic Restoration] 14: 13 and Chan Hung Kinh Te 15: 25. Phu Tong Uy Di Cu Ty Nan (1957) Hoat dong cua Phu Tong Uy Di Cu Ty Nan trong nam chap chanh thu III cua Ngo Tong Thong [Activities of the Commissariat for Refugees in the Third Year of President Ngo’s Administration]. Official report dated 7 July. —— (1958) Cuoc di cu lich su tai Viet Nam [The Historical Migration Movement in Vietnam] Saigon: Cong Hoa Viet Nam. Salemink, Oscar (2003) The Ethnography of the Central Highlanders of Vietnam: a historical contextualization, 1850–1990. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press; London: RoutledgeCurzon. Tan, Stan B-H (2000) ‘Coffee Frontiers in the Central Highlands of Vietnam: Networks of Connectivity’ Asia Pacific Viewpoint 41: 51–68. —— (2006a). ‘Dust Beneath the Mist: State and Frontier Formation in the Central

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Highlands of Vietnam, the 1955–61 Period’. PhD Thesis. Australian National University. Canberra, Australia. —— (2006b) ‘Swiddens, Resettlements, Sedentarizations, and Villages: State Formation among the Central Highlanders of Vietnam under the First Republic, 1955–1961’. Journal of Vietnamese Studies 1(1–2), February/August: 210–52. Touneh Han Dang (1972) ‘Quan niem ve so huu dat dai va thuc trang sinh ke cua cac sac dan Thuong’ [Concepts of Landownership and Real Situation of Livelihoods of Highland Ethnic Groups] in Dong bao cac sac toc thieu so Viet Nam. Compiled by Nguyen Trac Di. Saigon: Bo Phat Trien Sac Toc. Viet Nam Cong Hoa (1959) Chinh Sach Dinh Dien, Cai Cach Dien Dia va Nong Tin [The Policies of Dinh Dien, Agricultural Land Reform and Agrarian Credit]. Saigon: Van Huu A Chau. Volk, Nancy Dorcas (1979) ‘A Temporary Community in a Temporary World: A Montagnard Resettlement Area in Southern Vietnam’. PhD Thesis. University of Washington, Washington. Wickert, Frederic (1959) ‘The Tribesmen’ in Richard Lindholm (ed.) Viet-Nam: the first five years. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Wolters, Oliver W. (1982) History, Region and Culture in Southeast Asian Perspectives. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Y Khap Nie (1966) ‘Vai tro quan trong cua dong bao Thuong trong cong cuoc chong Cong San xam lang tai Cao Nguyen’ [The Important Role of Highlander Compatriots in the Task of Countering Communist Invasion in the Highlands]. Tap San Thuong Vu 1: 57–60.

5

‘Community development’ on the Sino-Burmese border: villagers, Oxfam and the Chinese state Miwa Hirono

In the previous chapter, we considered the idea of an ‘internal frontier’ in President Ngo Dinh Diem’s Vietnam (1954–63), contrasting differing approaches to regulating land use in the Central Highlands. What we found was that it was rarely a case of a simple clash between the Vietnamese state-sanctioned land regime, on the one hand, and indigenous Highland practice on the other. Instead, relationships, and ways of thinking and acting, were much more jumbled up. Thus, we found ethnic Vietnamese people, including government officials, colluding with minority Highlanders against the Vietnamese state. There were Highlanders who were quick to embrace the new ‘Vietnamese’ land regime if it suited them, even if it went against indigenous practice. Also, it was not the case that the Vietnamese state was immune to Highland ways of thinking about land. In fact, its policy interventions showed clear signs of borrowing from indigenous practice. In this chapter, we are again thinking about ‘the frontier’ in terms of competing ideas and competing practice, rather than simply as a geographical entity, although in the case examined here the intermingling of different ideas and practices is occurring close to the Sino–Burmese border. This chapter draws on the experiences of one particular international nongovernmental organisation (NGO) in its role as an actor operating at the frontier. International NGOs tend to operate on the basis of their own values, including those of participation and gender equality. The values often differ from those of other actors operating in the same area, including the state and the local people. An examination of the interaction of an international NGO, on the one hand, and the Chinese state and local people on the other, thus affords us a more nuanced understanding of the frontier as a place where differing ideas and practices intermingle. Specifically, the chapter looks at the implementation of a grassroots, community development project sponsored by Oxfam Hong Kong in a village in Yunnan province in 2001–04. The village in question is called Dalaba and is located in an ethnic minority area, the Langcang Lahu Nationality

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Autonomous County, in the province’s Simao district. Dalaba comprises 271 households with a total population of 1125 people. It is one of 11 villages which make up Muga township. Dalaba exists in the highlands. Its households are scattered over various valleys and hills where the Dalaba villagers grow dry and wet rice, wheat and corn. Langcang County, however, is designated by the Chinese government as one of the poorest counties in China. As recently as 2003 Dalaba villagers used to live on 261 renminbi per capita per annum, far below the Chinese national poverty line of 625 renminbi (about US$75) (Oxfam Hong Kong 2003: 19). One of the notable features of the village is that its inhabitants are Christian, having converted from animism following evangelism by British missionaries in the early twentieth century. Today, nearly all of the villagers attend church, and from what I could see, the elderly pastor had an excellent reputation among them. Before each Sunday service, the priest spoke about village development, farming, notices from the local government, and the implications of any new government policy for the village. People listened to him with great respect. Moreover, when the villagers disagreed among themselves, they often went to their pastor, asking for his help in resolving their differences (Interview with a villager, in Dalaba natural village, 18 November 2003). In this chapter, I consider the relationship of three different actors to the community development project in Dalaba, namely Oxfam, the Chinese local government, and the villagers themselves. I argue that notwithstanding Oxfam’s own original perception of the project, local government officials and Dalaba villagers interpreted and practised Oxfam’s values differently. To arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the intermingling of competing ideas and practices at the frontier, it is necessary to understand the differences in terms of how each actor perceived Oxfam’s values. It is because of these differences that the Chinese government was able to permit Oxfam to operate in a sensitive border area, and the villagers to welcome the project. As a result of the differences in perception, however, the project did not go the way Oxfam hoped, and its short-term impact on both indigenous culture and existing power structures seemed negligible. This raises interesting questions about how ‘external’ ideas fare in the face of entrenched political power and indigenous practice, and about the precise nature of exchange at the frontier. The next section looks at how Oxfam viewed the community development project in Dalaba. After that, I explore the relationship of the local government and the villagers to the project, before considering what my findings mean for an understanding of frontier.

‘Community development’ on the Sino-Burmese border 53

Looking from the outside: how Oxfam viewed its activities in Dalaba Oxfam’s vision Oxfam Hong Kong is a secular international non-governmental organisation that works on issues of development and advocacy (Oxfam International 2004). It is one of 13 independent Oxfams around the world, forming a confederation of affiliates known as Oxfam International.1 The 13 Oxfam affiliates share core values that are documented in Oxfam International’s global strategic plan (Oxfam International 2001 and interview with Regional Manager, East Asia, Oxfam Australia, in Melbourne, 19 December 2005). One value Oxfam highlights as being particularly important to its work is participation. As its strategic plan makes clear, Oxfam equates participation with what the development literature refers to as self-mobilisation: In all our actions our ultimate goal is to enable people to exercise their rights and manage their own lives. For people to be able to exercise their rights, opportunities must be created so people can participate in governing all aspects of their lives; and they must have the genuine capacity to organise and take advantage of those opportunities. (Oxfam International 2001) In the development literature, there are various different typologies designed to capture differing levels of community participation, ranging from outright manipulation or simple informing at one end, to high degrees of citizen control at the other, where citizens set their own agendas, without reference to outsiders. Put differently, there are various states in between full participation and outright manipulation where participation is viewed as tending towards passivity, or being more procedural rather than substantive (Arnstein 1969, Chambers 1983 and 1994, Pretty 1995, Cornwall 1996, Kelly 2001). In its community development projects, Oxfam always seeks to operate at the higher end of the participation scale. In particular, it tries to ensure that the poor and marginalised have a voice in community decision making. In many parts of the world where Oxfam works, this means strengthening the position of women in society since gender equality is another of Oxfam’s core values. Operating in China In relation to its work in China, however, Oxfam needed to be fully aware of the political environment in which it operated.2 This section narrows our

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discussion to how the values discussed above were reflected in Oxfam’s community development project in Dalaba. Oxfam emphasised the crucial role of the project’s community organisation in achieving the project’s goal of strengthening community participation. The community organisation had responsibility for deciding how to spend a community development fund of 200,000 renminbi (US$24,200), provided by Oxfam in the form of a loan. Having villagers participate in decisions about how their community development fund was spent was central to the project. The villagers decided to use the fund to establish a medical clinic and to construct a road. While the idea was that the community organisation involved the whole village, it was represented by a five-member management committee which was directly elected by the villagers. In keeping with Oxfam’s commitment to gender equality, it was a requirement of the project that at least one of the management committee members be female. An Oxfam staff member said that Oxfam also took steps to ensure that the committee was not dominated by the richer or more powerful members of society (e.g. members of the government-controlled villagers’ committee that covered a larger geographical area than the Dalaba village alone). The community organisation in Dalaba was quite different from the government-controlled villagers’ committee in terms of the nature of its representation and how it operated. The community organisation was based on what the Chinese government referred to as the ‘natural village’, which was strongly associated with Dalaba’s Christian community, and which was to be distinguished from the ‘administrative village’ with which the villagers’ committee was associated. Even though Oxfam did not appear to interfere directly in the election process, prior to the election it ‘facilitated some discussion’ among villagers about the sort of people who might be suitable for committee membership. Villagers in Dalaba decided that they would not elect the current members of the government-controlled villagers’ committee because they did not live in Dalaba. In Dalaba, the villagers more strongly identify with the Christian Dalaba natural village, rather than with the secular administrative village. In the official terminology of the Chinese state, the villagers’ committee is a grassroots mass organisation. It is thus locked in the vertical, political and administrative hierarchy that descends from Beijing to the village. Thus, as well as being tasked to represent villagers, villagers’ committees are responsible for implementing government policy and collecting taxes. In addition, they also serve as the eyes and the ears of the Chinese state at the grassroots level. This results in a degree of suspicion and reluctance to express views too freely in village representative assemblies which are held once or twice a year. Part of the reason for this is that the representative assemblies tend

‘Community development’ on the Sino-Burmese border 55 to be ‘subservient to village Party Branches and the Villagers’ Committees’ (Chan 2003: 199). Villagers stressed the way in which in contrast to the community organisation, villagers’ committees tended to be dominated by the wealthy and well-connected. Moreover, reflecting a deep-seated gender bias in Dalaba, female representation on the villagers’ committee was also rare. However, if this was Oxfam’s perception of its project in China, to what extent did reality conform to this perception? It is to this I now turn, looking first at local government’s relationship to the project and then at the attitudes of villagers.

Power in the land: how the Chinese authorities viewed Oxfam’s presence On closer examination, it was clear that the community development project in Dalaba was not operating in quite the way Oxfam said it was. Nor did the Chinese government view the project in the same way as Oxfam. First, while Oxfam believed it was contributing to the emergence of new and superior forms of participation by, and empowerment of, people, the Chinese government saw the project in a very different light. Indeed, given official sensitivity to any kind of organisation outside the Chinese Communist Party structure, it is clear that the state allowed Oxfam to operate only because it believed it posed no threat to state authority. In fact, Chinese local government officials saw the work of the community organisation at the grassroots as a means of strengthening social control and less as a challenge to state authority. This is because, as far as local authorities were concerned, the community organisation was an alternative but ultimately benign forum in which the villagers could both air their concerns and gain access to the community fund in order to improve their standard of living. Therefore, in the assessment of the Chinese local government, the community organisation was more likely to increase community loyalty than to undermine it. Certainly, one of the local government officials I spoke to talked favourably about the way in which the community organisation had encouraged villagers to participate in community affairs (Interview with a government official, in Muga township, 19 November 2003). However, as I will discuss in a moment, this was not necessarily participation of the quality to which Oxfam was aspiring. In understanding the motives of the Chinese authorities in permitting Oxfam to operate, it also should not be forgotten that the project resulted in the injection of a significant sum of money into the community. Aside from the community development fund, which was a significant fund in its own right, total project funding was 1.6 million renminbi (US$195,500). To a poor community such as Dalaba this was a very large sum of money.

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Moreover, since 80 per cent of the project funding was provided by Oxfam with the remainder coming from the local government, the cost to the local government was small. Also, there was an overlap between the community organisation and the villagers’ committee in Dalaba, even though Oxfam laid great stress on the distinction between the two. At one level there was a distinction between the two since the villagers made a conscious decision to exclude villagers’ committee members from the community organisation. However, as it turned out, this was not necessarily the case in reality, because the person most respected by the villagers, namely the church pastor, was himself a member of the villagers’ committee and therefore also part of the government hierarchy. This further muddies the waters in terms of the relationship of the Chinese local government to the project. Oxfam itself also relied on the church pastor to support its project, underlining the way power relations were rarely distinctly one or the other. In addition, the village pastor was a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference at the county level, further adding to the sense that he was a pillar of the official community. Thus, if the authorities were worried about what Oxfam was doing, they had a well-respected person who could keep them informed of Oxfam’s activities and who could influence the villagers. In short, a difference in perception and an overlap in power relations were the keys to maintaining the stable relationship between Oxfam’s project and the Chinese local government. The next question is how the villagers perceived the project. We now turn to this question.

Passive participation: dependent villagers and the Oxfam project Based on my conversations with Oxfam it was clear that the notions of participation and gender equality in the project were something of which it was particularly proud. This was partly because of the activity of the community organisation in contrast with that of the government-controlled villagers’ committee, and partly because of Oxfam’s sense that it was pioneering a form of participation which was meaningful to women and the poor. In practice, however, there seems to have been something of a gap between the way Oxfam staff members characterised their project and the reality confronting them. From interviews with them, I gained the strong sense that their expression was more often ‘aspiration’ than ‘reality’, and that the quality of villager participation and the realisation of gender equality were only developing at best. This is indicated, for example, in the project’s achievements in improving women’s participation in community affairs. In interviews with male villagers

‘Community development’ on the Sino-Burmese border 57 in the final phase of the project, they were happy to talk to me about their understanding of the community organisation. Women, on the other hand, were much more shy and reticent. After some encouragement, some of the women started to introduce themselves but I realised from their attitude how much further there was to go before Oxfam could really claim that its goals in terms of gender equality and participation had been achieved. Moreover, while Oxfam said it was concerned not to impose its view on the villagers – instead wanting initiatives to come from them – it was not always clear that this is how the villagers saw it. For the villagers, Oxfam was first and foremost a rich donor which on account of its wealth had the potential to make a difference to their lives. However, villagers struggled to embrace the idea that initiatives should come from them rather than Oxfam. This came across strongly in a meeting I observed between the villagers in Dalaba and Oxfam staff members, at which villagers were extremely reticent about expressing any opinion at all. The meeting in question was held outdoors to try to reduce the sense of formality and to encourage villagers to speak out. The Oxfam Programme Officer, who was from Kunming, and who was thus an outsider, asked the villagers questions such as: ‘What does participation mean?’ and ‘If there were disagreement at a meeting among the participants over how the community development fund should be used, how would you deal with that?’ No one replied. ‘Do you have any ideas?’ she asked. There was still silence. After a few awkward moments, she said, ‘Those are the sorts of questions that Oxfam wants you to think about.’ The nature of this discussion clearly raises questions about the extent of villagers’ participation. The villagers’ participation is evidently far from the self-mobilisation that Oxfam subscribes to. Rather, it seems more to be ‘passive participation’ (Pretty 1995: 1252). In short, the project did not affect pre-existing social practices in the village. In fact, pre-existing social practices in the village based on the villagers shared Christian faith contributed to a welcoming and cooperative attitude in relation to the project. Indeed, the influential local pastor, and a strong sense of community deriving from the church network, was central to Oxfam’s ability to make any progress at all. This point is very important to our investigation of the interaction of values at the frontier. Oxfam is a secular international NGO that subscribes to non-religious principles. In the course of the interaction between Oxfam and the local villagers, Oxfam changed its operation from one in which it abided by non-religious principles, to one in which it utilised the local religious network. In other words, because of the binding role of the church pastor, and Oxfam’s informal cooperation with him, Oxfam successfully utilised both pre-existing social relations in the village and religious beliefs to the project’s advantage. Importantly, however, the utilisation of pre-existing social relations was

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perceived differently by Oxfam and the villagers. Oxfam emphasised that the participation of the villagers in community affairs was the main objective of the project, and that cooperation with the church pastor was only a minor consideration aimed at facilitating the project. In contrast, from the villagers’ perspective, Oxfam’s cooperation with the church pastor was central to their decision to participate in the project. Once again, therefore, there was a difference between the perceptions of Oxfam and the villagers about the relationship of the project to pre-existing social practices.

Conclusion This chapter has examined the interaction of the different values of three actors at China’s south-east frontier. It identifies differences in the perceptions of Oxfam and the Chinese local government, and of Oxfam and local villagers. Such differences have at least three implications in terms of a better understanding of the nature of frontier. The first lies in the way the state is able to extend its power and control at the frontier. The undertaking of a politically sensitive project in China by an international NGO working at China’s frontier does not necessarily mean that government control of that NGO is in any way limited simply because the project takes place at the frontier. Arguably, the Chinese government perceived Oxfam’s project as a better, or at least equally acceptable, tool with which to govern its people, and therefore considered that it exerted an acceptable degree of control over Oxfam and the villagers at the frontier. From Oxfam’s perspective, however, government control at the frontier appeared to be, if anything, relatively flexible, because the government allowed Oxfam to conduct a project that aimed to achieve a high degree of participation – quite a different perception. This difference in perception enabled Oxfam to undertake its project. The second implication of this chapter lies in the view that ‘external ideas’ do not significantly affect pre-existing social practices in the village. On the contrary, the apparent acknowledgment by Oxfam of pre-existing social practices proved an essential prerequisite engendering a welcoming attitude by the villagers and securing their cooperation in the project. Finally, this chapter leads to the conclusion that the nature of the exchange of competing ideas and practices at the frontier points to something other than a clear-cut win or lose result. Thus, as depicted here, politics is rather more complicated than a simple zero-sum game. At the frontier, various actors interpret ideas differently, and these differences can lubricate what otherwise might be quite awkward relationships.

‘Community development’ on the Sino-Burmese border 59 Notes 1 Oxfam exists in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Québec, Spain and the United States. 2 From this section onwards, ‘Oxfam’ refers to Oxfam Hong Kong. Bibliography Arnstein, S. R. (1969) ‘A Ladder of Citizen Participation’, American Institute of Planners 35: 216–24. Chambers, R. (1983) Rural Development: putting the last first. London: Longman. —— (1994) ‘The Origins and Practice of Participatory Rural Appraisal’, World Development 22(7): 953–69. Chan, S. (2003) ‘Villagers’ Representative Assemblies: Towards Democracy or Centralism?’, China: An International Journal 1(2): 179–99. Cornwall, A. (1996) ‘Towards Participatory Practice: Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and the Participatory Process’, in Korrie De Koning and Marion Martin (eds) Participatory Research in Health: issues and experiences. London: Zed Books, pp. 94–107. Kelly, D. (2001) Community Participation in Rangeland Management, Canberra: Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation. Online. Available HTTP: < http://www.rirdc.gov.au/reports/Ras/01-118.pdf> (accessed 11 March 2006). Ma, Q. (2002) ‘The Governance of NGOs in China Since 1978: How Much Autonomy?’, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 31(3): 305–28. Oxfam Hong Kong (2003) Leshihui Nianbao 2002–03 (Oxfam Hong Kong Annual Review 2002–03), Hong Kong: Oxfam Hong Kong. Oxfam International (2001) ‘Towards Global Equity: Strategic Plan 2001–2004’. Online. Available HTTP: (accessed 4 January 2006). —— (2004) ‘Human Rights for Social Change’. Online. Available HTTP:http:// www.oxfam.org/en/files/doc040119_wsf_human_rights_jeremy_speech.pdf (accessed 4 January 2006). Pretty, J. N. (1995) ‘Participatory Learning for Sustainable Agriculture’, World Development 23(8): 1247–63.

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The politics of ‘opening up’: female traders on the borderlands of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Burma (Myanmar)1 Kyoko Kusakabe

Ever since the former Thai prime minister, Chatichai Choonhavan, made his famous battlefield to markets speech in 1989, a common refrain in respect of the Greater Mekong Sub-region has been the idea of the ‘opening up’ of the sub-region to increased trade and investment, where restrictions on flows of goods, people and money across borders have been lifted. However, the term ‘opening up’ carries with it a number of assumptions, which may not always be justified. While inter-state conflict during the Cold War meant that traffic across borders in the sub-region was often restricted and on some borders the restrictions were strictly adhered to (Stuart-Fox 1997), the notion that borders were entirely shut is less common than people think. More often, we are dealing with much greater shades of grey such that various forms of illegal or informal movement across borders occurred during times of ostensible restriction. Furthermore, once borders were formally ‘open’, it is a mistake to see them as restriction-free since to this day borders are subject to diverse forms of regulation (Walker 2000). Since the end of the Cold War, borders have also been closed at times of instability, such as when there was anti-Thai rioting in Phnom Penh in 2003, or at times of major health scares, such as the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2002.2 This chapter looks at the experiences of women traders in four border regions between Laos and Thailand, Thailand and Cambodia, and Thailand and Burma (Myanmar), exploring what ‘opening up’ has meant for them.3 Adopting a consciously gendered perspective, the chapter seeks to show how gender ideologies are embedded in relations of power and resistance on the border. Key questions include: How do women experience the border? How do they use the border to enhance their life chances? And, what are the counter discourses and tactics that women deploy to overcome situations which otherwise might be to their disadvantage? The chapter is structured as follows. I first document some of the positive experiences of ‘opening up’ that women reported to us. As Staudt (1998: 8)

The politics of ‘opening up’ 61 has observed, the space created by the borderland provides an opportunity for women (and men) to make ‘strategic decisions’ to maximise border opportunities. I then highlight the way in which many of these gains have proven quite tenuous, notably with the influx of big business and moves by the state to strengthen ‘regulation’ of what by the mid to late 1990s were often lucrative cross-border flows. The last part of the chapter looks at the various strategies women have deployed in order to survive in the face of power.

‘Opening up’ as opportunity While I am at pains in this chapter to emphasise the diversity of experience one encounters on the border, for some women operating on or near the border, the period since the late 1980s and early 1990s has undoubtedly been one of new opportunities as once marginalised or conflict-ridden areas have been transformed into centres of exchange and commercial vibrancy. I focus on three areas, which appear to have been important for women, namely increased income, improved status, and a greater sense of freedom. As we will see, such benefits were evident at all four of the borders area we looked at. New sources of income On the Northern Sayaboury–Nan border between Laos and Thailand, cotton cloth weaving has led to new sources of income for weaving households in Laos. This has particularly been the case for Lao Lue women who have a tradition of weaving and who have benefited from work being outsourced to them from the same Lue ethnic groups in Thailand since the early 1990s. This is the period when the New Economic Mechanism policy was adopted in 1986, and the border economy between Thailand and Laos started to flourish. The gains are clearly evident in the form of newly built houses and greater possession of consumer goods. In 1986, there was only a single bicycle in a village. Now, this would be unheard of (Khamphoui 2005). At another point on the border between Laos and Thailand – at the Thakhek–Nakorn Phnom crossing – easier cross-border access has had benefits for Lao women making sticky rice containers, which are then sent to Thailand for finishing and sale. The work came about as a result of a tipoff from relatives living across the border in Thailand who saw a business opportunity. The border was strictly controlled between 1976 and 1988, and only after that could relatives on the other sides of the border be able to go back and forth. The work is mainly carried out by older women because many of the younger women have migrated to Thailand to work. However,

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as with their counterparts on the Northern Sayaboury–Nan border, it has also provided a welcome source of income. On the Poipet–Aranyapraphet border between Cambodia and Thailand, fish trading has provided an important boost to the income of Cambodian women. During the 1980s and for much of the 1990s, the fish trade was controlled by the Kampuchea Fish Import Export Company (KAMFIMEX). KAMFIMEX was established by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in 1981 and was the sole licensed exporter of fish products (Thouch and Todd 2002, Chea and McKenney 2003). In theory, all fish destined for export had to be sold to KAMFIMEX. Some women said business was at its best when the security situation was still volatile and hence many people, including in some cases KAMFIMEX, stayed away. When the civil war subsided, KAMFIMEX started to collect fees from small-scale traders at the border. On the Tachilek–Mae Sai border between Thailand and Burma, Burman women are employed peeling garlic in workshops on the Burmese side. Many are from former farming households who have lost their land or have migrated to the border in search of better wages in the border town. The pay is very low but it is better than what they can make by staying in their villages. Gains in recognition and status New employment opportunities and the associated higher living standards have also had a positive impact on the status of some women who work on the border.4 Our research on the weaving communities on the Northern Sayaboury–Nan border showed that just over half of the women who had taken up weaving stopped going to collect firewood, which previously had been one of their standard chores. We interpret this as a recognition by other family members of women’s contribution to the household. That said, changes in household division of labour tended to be more pronounced in cases where weaving was a new activity compared with households where women had traditionally engaged in weaving. A similar picture of status gains can be seen among the Burman garlic peelers on the Tachilek–Mae Sai border. For example, one woman we spoke to told us how her mother-in-law initially opposed her working on the border town but that she changed her mind once her daughter-in-law started sending money home. Now, her mother-in-law offers to take care of her children while she is away.

The politics of ‘opening up’ 63 Freedom Beyond new sources of income and some improvement in women’s status, a number of women told us how they valued the freedom that came with working on the border. As one informant working in Tachilek told us in beautifully eloquent language: ‘It is a great opportunity for me to be able to watch the live music band show at the city hall. … I feel like a bird freed from its cage. In my village, there is no such performance and even if we have one, women are prevented from going. If village women join this kind of pwe (festival), they will be viewed as being of loose character. If I were in Yangon, I would never have a chance like this, since such concerts are meant for the elite and rich young people. In the border town I do not feel this kind of hierarchy among border residents.’ (Interview with Burman migrant women in Tachilek in June 2002) That said, young women who leave their villages do not entirely escape the watchful eye of their communities insofar as they tend to live among their own kind while on the border. Consequently, reports of their activities could easily filter back to the village. Indeed, many parents would allow their daughters to go to the border only if they went in a group. While some women rebelled against attempts to monitor their behaviour in this way, most accepted it as the price for being allowed to leave the village at all. In this chapter, I have so far talked about women’s experience of the border in largely positive terms, characterised by fresh employment opportunities, improved income, higher status, and a greater sense of freedom, though with limitations. However, this is not the only way women experienced the border. Indeed, for some women, these gains were often tenuous while for others their experience of the border was simply different. It is to a more troubled experience of ‘opening up’ for women in the Mekong that I now turn.

‘Opening up’ as struggle Income erosion While many women have enjoyed significant improvements in their income by working on the border, they have also been vulnerable to price fluctuations which on occasions have left them significantly worse off. This was especially the case for the Lao weavers weaving for Thai market on the Northern Sayaboury–Nan border. In the first half of the 1990s, prices for woven materials were high. At the peak in 1992–95, Thai buyers were

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paying up to 800 baht for a set of cloth.5 With prices high, many new entrants flocked into the profession, including people who had either left the trade on account of competition from ready-made clothes from China as well as those with no tradition of weaving. However, the rush into weaving soon resulted in a situation of oversupply and a drastic fall in prices. In the year 2000, the price fell to 300 baht per set. In addition, the Lao women are working as subcontractors for Thai buyers. Even when they can weave by themselves, they are still dependent on the Thai side for knowledge of the latest fashions in terms of patterns. This highlights the way in which the Lao women are very much the junior party in a Thai-dominated political economy. When cloth prices plummeted, Lao weavers tried to weave as many pieces as possible to earn money from quantity rather than quality. However, this meant leaving out certain designs which were more time-consuming to weave. The trouble is that not only did this lower the value of what was being woven but it also meant that some of the more traditional but elaborate designs – which were the hallmark of the Lao weavers – started to die out. There is thus a sense in which the opening of the border and associated weaving fever has led to an erosion of traditional Lao weaving skills. Status losses If women’s income has proven vulnerable to erosion, so too have gains in their status. Gender division have shown some change, but we need to explore whether this is a temporary phenomenon (Kabeer 2000). When the price of woven material fell for Lao women on the Northern Sayaboury–Nan border, we found that family support for women also declined. For example, on the back of the high material price, one family had invested in a generator so that female members of the household could weave after dark. However, once the price fell, electricity from a generator was used by the male family members and children to watch television. It can, of course, be questioned whether investment in the generator was ever solely for the women. However, it did help the women to work better and reduce eye strain. In some of the households we looked at on the Northern Sayaboury–Nan border, there was no corresponding rise in women’s status even when they brought in extra money.6 As discussed earlier, the changes in division of labour were more prominent in those communities where weaving was a newly introduced activity than those where weaving has been traditionally practiced by women. That is, where weaving was already defined as a secondary income activity – by women and men – neither the status of the activity nor the status of the women engaged in that activity improved, simply because their contribution to the family budget had increased. Thus,

The politics of ‘opening up’ 65 as one woman said, even though the roof of their house was put up on the basis of her earnings, she was still expected to weave in her ‘free’ time between other household chores. In some cases, changes in employment practices resulting from ‘opening up’ have had negative implications for women’s status. On the Lao side of the Thakhek–Nakorn Phnom border, for instance, making sticky rice containers was originally defined as men’s work prior to ‘opening up’. In those days, the containers were made simply for household use. That the task fell to the men was symbolic in the sense that men, as the head of the household, made the basket to hold the rice. However, with the opening of the border, making sticky rice containers became a secondary income-generating activity and the entire activity was redefined as women’s work. Nowadays, men rarely make the containers, even though this was originally the tradition. The women who make the sticky rice containers – like their counterparts in the cloth weaving industry – are also the weaker party in an exchange in which the Thai side is once again dominant. Lao women only produce unfinished containers. It is not that they cannot produce the finished product. Rather, it is because the Thai side insist that the container is unfinished, so that they can add the value in order to maximise their returns. With limited access to market information or alternative sales outlets, the Lao women are reluctant to jeopardise their relationship with their Thai buyers, choosing instead to continue to produce the unfinished product even though this reduces what they might otherwise be able to earn. A place of last resort While some women on the Tachilek–Mae Sai border appreciated the border because of the greater sense of freedom it gave them, others provided a range of different perspectives. Many Burman women interviewed regarded the border as a dangerous, lawless place where money and connections were crucial if one hoped to survive. Moreover, the border was not viewed as a place to settle down. Instead, women saw it as simply a place to earn some money before returning to relative safety of the village.7 For others, the border was a place of last resort. This came across strongly on the Tachilek–Mae Sai border between Thailand and Burma where the Burmese women we spoke to described how state agricultural policy had impoverished them even to the point of losing their land. Thus, farmers in Sae Doe village had sent their daughters to Tachilek to earn some money and in effect circumvent the state’s punitive polices. That said, once on the border, the women often appreciated the freedom it represented, as we saw earlier. Burman women on the Tachilek–Mae Sai border also described how they felt discriminated against by the Shan majority. In this context, they had

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no desire to assimilate. Instead, they drew strength from a critique of the dominant Shan culture, as one informant indicated: ‘When we go to the monastery in our village, we have to dress properly – that is, in traditional outfit [blouse and sarong]. We cannot wear T-shirt or skirt to go to the monastery like here. We have to cover our neck. We have to wear a shawl [The-bat in Burmese] to cover our blouse. We cannot go the monastery “free-style [Pyit Katutsan]” like the border people here. Seeing the border people going to the monastery very casually makes me feel sacrilegious.’ (Interview with Burman migrant women in Tachilek in July 2002) We now look at how life on the border changed for many women when big business moved in, and the state stepped up its efforts to regulate what by the mid-1990s – and in some cases earlier – was an increasingly lucrative cross-border trade.

‘Formalisation’ of the border The influx of the state and big business When a border crossing point is approached by a dirt road, and comprises just a few stalls and a handful of simple dwellings, which may or may not be inhabited by customs officials or border police, it is generally considered ‘poor’ and undeveloped. ‘Development’ is often seen as occurring when the road is improved and more substantial government offices and retail centres are built (Tsuneishi 2005). This is a pattern which has been repeated across the sub-region since the 1990s as business has picked up. However, improved infrastructure is also associated with the arrival of big business and the state seeking to benefit from the new opportunities. In the case of the state, this includes new opportunities to regulate commercial activity. We refer to this process as ‘formalisation’. We now look at what ‘formalisation’ has meant for women in two of our four border locations. Higher fees and more awkward regulations Apart from price fluctuations and an unequal political economy, there are other ways in which ‘opening up’ has proved to be a more mixed experience for women on the Mekong. For example, traders’ profit margins have been eroded in the face of unwelcome advances by predatory state interests, all seeking their cut. This can be seen in the case of the fish traders on the Cambodian side of the Aranyaprathet–Poipet border. As we saw, the trade

The politics of ‘opening up’ 67 was originally overseen by the state enterprise, KAMFIMEX. However, KAMFIMEX gradually lost its pre-eminent position in the face of opposition from fish traders, who staged a series of protests in 2001–02, and the gradual emergence of competitor companies in the context of marketisation in Cambodia. From the perspective of female fish traders, the decline of KAMFIMEX had not been associated with an improvement in the terms of trade. In fact the opposite appears to have been the case. In the late 1990s, as political instability subsided and trade picked up, just such a process of ‘formalisation’ occurred on the Aranyaprathet–Poipet border, with both the Thai and Cambodian governments building new immigration and customs offices. However, whereas in the past Cambodian women trading fish paid most of their ‘fees’ on the Cambodian side of the border, now they were hit with increased regulation on the Thai side. According to Thai regulations, only Thai nationals, who are registered for import tax, can import fish. As a result, all Cambodian traders have to trade with Thai importers, including paying them a fee. With greater attention being given to the border trade, women we spoke to told us that Thai customs fees also went up. The regulations state that importers can pay at the border for goods worth less than 20,000 baht. However, for goods worth more than 20,000 baht, importers have to pay tax at the provincial customs office. Most of the Cambodian women we interviewed trade far above the 20,000 baht ceiling. The problem is that the customs office is inside Thailand in an area where Cambodian traders are not permitted to go with their day border pass. This makes it virtually impossible for them to pay legally. Consequently, the women pay at the border but since this is against the regulations, they are in danger of being taken advantage of. Prior to 2000, the women were paying 20 baht for every basket of fish they brought into Thailand. Now they pay 100–200 baht, depending on the arom (mood) of the official. According to research conducted in 2002–03, it required a staggering 27 payments made to 15 institutions in 16 locations to get the fish from the landing site in Kampong Chhnang, Cambodia to Rong Kluer market in Thailand. According to the research, nearly 70 per cent of traders’ potential profit was used up paying fees, of which approximately two-thirds occurred in Cambodia. The vast majority of the fees – i.e. around 80 per cent – were unofficial or took the form of bribes (Chea and McKenney 2003). Furthermore, the way the rules are implemented tends to favour the bigger traders, who moved in when the security situation on the border improved, and who also have more negotiating power with the authorities. At the border, since no trucks are allowed to cross from Cambodia into Thailand, traders need to unload the fish and load it onto carts to cross the border. Large traders, who are mostly men, tend to pay less for transportation than small

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traders. This is far cry from the KAMFIMEX days when the women held a pre-eminent position in the fish trade. New taxes ‘Formalisation’ has led to similar problems for women on the Northern Sayaboury–Nan border between Laos and Thailand where in 2000 woven material was subject to a new tax by the Lao government. The women can either pay the tax piecemeal or monthly. However, the monthly payment is fixed regardless of how much a person trades. The new payment has eaten into profit margins such that few women now find it worthwhile to bring their material to the border market for sale. Instead, they have started selling their material to agents who sell it on at the border. Unlike the women, the agents have sufficient capital to pay the monthly tax, and because they are dealing in larger amounts of cloth, it is worth their while. While selling to agents has enabled the Lao women to continue in business – albeit with reduced returns – it has had the effect that they are no longer exposed to new designs, which they used to see at the border market. This further reduces the women’s chances of being able to develop their business. Some women have managed to penetrate the domestic market inside Thailand and are selling directly to buyers in Bangkok but this is quite rare. While we have sought to highlight the diversity of experience on the border – both good and bad – there is a danger in thinking that women simply suffer what is thrown at them. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. We now look at the various tactics – or strategies of resistance – that women deploy in order to survive, and at times prosper, in the face of power.

Strategies of resistance Using gendered stereotypes to negotiate On the Aranyaprathet–Poipet border, women fish traders said they were better suited to be traders than men because – in their words – they have less ego. According to the women we spoke to, women are much better at coping with the arrogant behaviour of Thai officials and the constant demands for payments. As one female trader put it: ‘It is better if women negotiate. If men negotiate [over a petty amount of fish], they will soon start fighting because both sides think that the other is looking down on them.’ (Cambodian women fish trader interviewed at Banteay Meanchey Province in July 2004)

The politics of ‘opening up’ 69 When asked about her strategies in negotiating with the authorities, she replied: ‘We beg (som ke). We beg them, please do not take much money. This is only to support our family.’ (Cambodian women fish trader interviewed at Banteay Meanchey Province in July 2004) In another episode reported to us, one woman trader got so angry at the sudden increase in customs charges on the Thai side of the border that she yelled and made a scene until the Thai customs officer lowered her fee. According to the traders, if men tried such negotiating tactics, it would likely backfire. It can thus be seen how women are in effect conforming to gender stereotypes – being subservient, asserting their motherhood, getting emotional – as a tactic to reduce how much they have to pay in fees.8 A similarly gendered approach to state power was evident during the protest against KAMFIMEX fees in 2001–02. Although it was the men who initiated the protest women traders certainly supported them. For example, many women signed a petition protesting against the KAMFIMEX fees. That said, fewer women joined the demonstration in front of the KAMFIMEX warehouse or at the governor’s house. When asked why they did not attend the demonstration, one woman trader said her husband had joined, adding: ‘Most of the families let their husbands go. Women are not good at talking. We do not know what to say.’ (Cambodian women fish trader interviewed at Banteay Meanchey in July 2004) So, while her husband joined the protest, she carried on with her business as usual. One reason for this is that women were more vulnerable to harassment by officials and hence were reluctant to be on the front line. Thus, even though the women were key players in the fish trade, when it came to negotiating with the government, it was the men who were to the fore. Subverting state-imposed boundaries Another tactic Cambodian women deployed in negotiations with their Thai counterparts across the border was to play down the fact they were of different nationality, instead emphasising their sameness. As we observed in Rong Kluer market on the Aranyaprathet-Poipet border, one Cambodian woman negotiating with a Thai woman said:

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In other contexts, such as when they are speaking with their fellow Cambodians, women would stress how they were different from the Thais, thus highlighting the way in which the assertion of a common bond was not heart-felt but just a tactic. What the women were doing, therefore, was constructing a sense of solidarity between themselves and their Thai counterparts, in effect seeking to make the state-demarcated international border irrelevant. Strikingly, we did not observe male transporters behaving in this way, further underlining the fact that women experience – and negotiate – the border differently from men. Women on the Cambodian–Thai border also appeared to conceive of the border differently from men in a debate about where the border market ought to be located. In contrast to the men who wanted the border market located on the Cambodian side, female traders argued that the location of the market was not important, as long as the Thai buyers were there. For women, therefore, the border is not the state-demarcated border but the border of their relationships. Thus, if the state closes the border, the traders tend to move to another crossing point where they are able to buy and sell, in effect circumventing state control.9

Conclusion In this chapter, I have examined the experience of women traders in four border regions between Laos and Thailand, Thailand and Cambodia, and Thailand and Burma (Myanmar) covering the period from the late 1980s to the present. While I have highlighted some of the positive experiences of ‘opening up’ for women who work on or close to the border, I also have shown that many of the gains have been quite tenuous. This was particularly the case following the influx of big business and moves by the state to strengthen ‘regulation’ as cross-border trade became more lucrative during the 1990s. The chapter captures well the idea that so-called ‘opening up’ has very often led to a process of increased regulation and not a retreat of the state.10 What this chapter has also demonstrated is that women in the Mekong sub-region are not simply passive objects waiting to be regulated and controlled. Rather, they are actively deploying a wide range of counter-hegmonic strategies (Staudt 1998) designed to carve out space for themselves, boost their income and generally strengthen their position in society. Some of the traders’ tactics involve conforming to gender stereotypes while others involve finding ways

The politics of ‘opening up’ 71 to subvert the state’s notion of what the border is. Of course, these tactics are not always successful, or can only achieve so much, but they are testament to the way in which the border is experienced and negotiated differently depending on one’s gender.

Notes 1 The author would like to acknowledge the help of Veena N with English editing. Acknowledgement also goes to IFAD, the ASEAN Foundation, and the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research North-South for supporting my research. 2 The process of ‘opening up’ on the Thai–Burma border has arguably been somewhat different from other borders in the sub-region because of the ongoing ethnic conflict inside Burma. The Thai military quietly supported armed ethnic nationalist groups from the 1960s through to the 1980s. However, with the end of Cold War in the 1990s, the Thai government began a process of ‘constructive engagement’ with Burma, cultivating economic ties that gave Thai generals and businessmen access to logging, fisheries and other business opportunities. At the same time, Thailand’s border provinces were the recipients of large numbers of refugees fleeing the fighting in Burma. The Thai government’s sympathy towards the refugees waned significantly following the seizure by antigovernment rebels of the Burmese embassy in Bangkok in 1999 and of Ratchaburi hospital in 2000. See Thant 2003, Huguet and Punpuing 2005 and Arnold 2006 for details. 3 For relevant supporting studies see Kusakabe 2004, and Kusakabe and Oo 2007, Kusakabe et al. 2008. 4 Other studies have shown similar effects. Looking at the Vietnam-Guanxi border, Xie 2000 has shown how increased trade has boosted women’s income, leading to improved status and autonomy within the family. Staudt 1998 has highlighted similar gains on the United States–Mexico border. 5 One set of cloth provides enough to make a shirt and a skirt. 6 Kamphoui 2005 has identified a similar phenomenon. 7 This view echoes an understanding of state power which sees it as being like the light of a candle (Anderson 1972). The place where the light reaches is a place of civilisation whereas beyond is viewed as wild and dark (Mabbet and Chandler 1995). 8 Similar practices have been described in respect of the Myanmar–China border (Thant 2003). 9 Marchand 2002 and Moss 2002 have articulated this in terms of a ‘re-articulation’ of state space, leading to the production of new meanings. 10 For analogous writing, see also Walker 2000 and Papademetriou and Meyers 2001.

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Chea Yim and McKenny, Bruce (2003) ‘Fish exports from the Great Lake to Thailand’, Working paper 27, Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Cambodia Development Resource Institute.

7

Dreaming beyond borders: the Thai/Lao borderlands and the mobility of the marginal Holly High

It was sunset, and the darkness was gathering in quickly. Don Khiaw, a rural village in Laos’ south, had no electricity, so these last moments of sunlight were typically busy: times to wash, pack away and prepare, before the darkness closed in around us.1 I was surprised, then, when Laay appeared at my home at this hour. After some small talk, she said, ‘It is not fun here, is it? It is silent. I sit at home all alone. Every day! Muey comes to visit. She visits often. Twice in one day.’ Don Khiaw is an island in the southern reaches of the Mekong River, just north of the border with Cambodia and just east of the border with Thailand, where the river spreads wide, and slips quietly between hundreds of small islands. While once Don Khiaw’s position within the Mekong’s busy streams meant that it was at the centre of the Tai world and the Kingdom of Champassak, Don Khiaw is now a place far from roads and markets. Rendered marginal by the contemporary distribution of regulation and power, it is today considered poor and out of the way. Laay looked at me intently as she continued: ‘Holly, I came to tell you something. Remember this afternoon I said I had business with you?’ I indicated that I did remember – she had said she wanted to talk to me in private, but we had not been able to find a moment. Now finally alone, Laay said: ‘I’m running away. Tomorrow I will leave.’ Laay had been particularly friendly towards me during my time on Don Khiaw, perhaps because I was one of the few young single women resident in the area. She was the youngest daughter of an ageing couple, who were too weak now to do heavy agricultural work. Laay’s ten older brothers and sisters had all moved to other destinations, including the Boloven Plateau, Pakse, Vientiane and Thailand. It remained to Laay, then just 16, to cultivate her parents’ land and assist them in day-to-day living. Not only had her siblings left, but so too had her neighbourhood friends and age-mates. Muey, Leeng and Ten had each been resident when I arrived, but they moved during the course of my fieldwork to the Boloven Plateau, a Vientiane factory and a

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Bangkok factory respectively. I had met other friends and age-mates during the piì may (New Year) celebrations, when migrants flock back to their rural homes. But for most of the time, Don Khiaw was a place that young people left behind rather than flocked to. For many young people, dreams and aspirations were focused resolutely beyond the village bounds, and Laay was no exception. ‘Where will you go?’ I asked. ‘Thailand,’ she said, her excitement now evident. ‘My friend En from across the river came to ask me today. She is a khón so¯ng [agent].2 She said that the next bus will leave tomorrow morning.’ As a khón so¯ng, En’s business is delivering would-be migrant labourers to Thailand. She charges 4000 to 5000 baht for her services, a payment which she offers to defer until the migrant starts earning money in Thailand. She arranges a bus to Vientiane, a seven-day tourist visa for her passengers, and delivery to Thailand. Migrants are then responsible for finding their own work. Domestic and factory labour for women, and fishing, factory or construction work for men, were the most commonly expected work arrangements among would-be migrants. I asked Laay what work she expected, and she said, ‘Caring for children, like my laan3 Wii.’ Wii, the daughter of Laay’s elder brother, was around the same age as Laay. Wii had spent the last harvest season living with Laay on Don Khiaw. The two girls were both talented singers, and would reel off extemporaneous and often mischievous stanzas of song as they worked together in Laay’s parents’ fields. When the harvest was completed, Wii returned to her home on another island an hour south of Don Khiaw. She took with her a sack of rice and a new outfit as gifts and payment for her labour. Laay was distraught to see Wii go. Wii departed for Thailand soon afterwards, finding employment as a domestic worker caring for the children of an urban Thai family. Occasionally, Wii sent pictures of herself posing with the children at various entertainment venues, such as the park or zoo. When Laay showed me the pictures, she giggled at how dark Wii’s skin looked next to her pale urban family. But she also commented that Wii seemed happy – she was wearing new, fashionable pedal pushers and a frilly white blouse. On the night when Laay came to tell me she was planning to run away, we spoke of all the things she hoped for and desired from migration. She wanted to be like Wii in the pictures – to see other places, to experience other lifestyles, wear fashionable clothes. She was excited by the prospect of earning – she speculated that she would earn around 4000 to 5000 baht a month. She planned to save this and use it to buy gold. She saw the gold as a form of saving, ‘because you can sell gold when you need money’ she explained. And she would spend a little on those things she had seen advertised on television – cosmetics, clothing, and other commodities.

Dreaming beyond borders 77 At my prompting, Laay estimated that she would be gone for ten years. I expressed surprise since we had only recently talked about her plans to marry in a couple of years. But Laay shrugged playfully: she was absorbed in this dream of a life beyond the border. Her dreams were rich with speculation and delight. It was not simply a money-earning expedition for Laay: it was an expedition of self-transformation. She would become another kind of person – ‘beautiful’, worldly, money in her pocket and gold on her body. Indeed, her aspiration for wealth was inseparable from her aspiration for self-transformation. As we spoke, I suspected that this night was more about aspiration than realisation. We had already talked about her plans for the upcoming Lao New Year festivities, and we knew that her parents were not likely to agree to her leaving. Moreover, although Laay spoke about running away, as indeed many of her friends had in defiance of their parents’ wishes, her resolve to go through with such an act was far from certain. Nevertheless, I agreed to go to her home the next morning to bid her farewell. When I arrived just after dawn, it emerged that Laay was in fact not going. Her mother stated with concern: ‘It is too dangerous. She is a woman – it is dangerous for women. I won’t let her go.’ She also said, ‘Boo mii khon yu huan’,4 meaning that she needed Laay to stay behind to work in the fields and at home. Her mother informed me that she and her husband had decided that Laay’s brother, Win, would be sent to Thailand instead. He was presently in the Boloven Plateau working on the coffee harvest, and when he returned to the family farm at New Year, his parents planned to suggest he go to Thailand. Laay’s father was sympathetic to Laay’s aspirations. He said, ‘The khon song came yesterday from Don Hiip5 looking for people to go. And, all day, Laay was saying, “I will go, I will go.” But in the end, her mother would not let her.’ It was thus a combination of perceived danger and duty that kept Laay from migrating. However, I remained struck by the depth of the desires and dreams Laay expressed that night, when she insisted that she would leave. Laay lived in a social world of mobility. The friends, family, siblings, age-mates and older generations that formed her personal network regularly engaged in migration to find work and earn money. Even for those who stayed behind, such as herself and her mother, migration remained an essential ingredient of their experiences and expectations. Moreover, migration is firmly entrenched in what Lao labouring youth perceive to be possible, desirable and probable. At the same time, migration to Thailand was not a step taken lightly. The cost of hiring a khon song was equivalent to a month’s wages – if Laay was fortunate enough to find a position offering Thailand’s minimum wage. Furthermore, the illegal status of most Lao labouring

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youth across the border exposes them to danger, particularly the dangers of exploitation and arrest. For people like Laay, borders matter. It is a central argument of this chapter that borders – and in particular the regimes of citizenship that they so tellingly signify and enforce – are key elements of differentiation. Like class, gender and race, citizenship today is a powerful mode of categorisation that divides and ranks the world’s population. Hyperbolic declarations of a ‘borderless world’ aside, it is doubtful that any thoughtful observer considers the contemporary world to be truly ‘borderless’. Instead, flows of people and capital that appear be unchecked by borders are in fact ‘strategic rather than diffuse’, with the infrastructure and resources associated with globalisation remarkably fixed in space and accessed only by certain people (Sassen 2000: 218). Thus, a ‘borderless’ lifestyle is one accessed only by the few, and particularly by the rich. It seems significant that on Don Khiaw, jet planes flew regularly overhead, because flyover rights are a major money earner for the Lao government, but residents themselves rarely if ever boarded these icons of globalisation. I do not wish to argue that the residents of Don Khiaw are isolated or totally innocent of modern mobility. Rather, my point is that their experiences of mobility, borders and the infrastructure of globalisation are shaped profoundly by their status in terms of wealth and citizenship. Citizenship does not eclipse other vectors of difference – such as class, gender and race – but instead intersects with them in important ways (Kipnis 2004). If we are to engage seriously with citizenship as a powerful contemporary mode of structuring inequality – and I think it is important that we do – the borderlands present themselves as a key area for consideration, because borders represent a none-too-subtle enactment of citizenship regimes. To anchor this discussion, I will examine the Thai–Lao border as it is experienced by the residents of Don Khiaw. The first two sections of this chapter describe how the southern border between Laos and Thailand has taken shape from pre-colonial times to the present. I will demonstrate that Laay’s westward-leaning aspirations have an important historical context. She is a member of a family of migrants, many of whom have experience in Thailand or other destinations, even though they have been associated with Don Khiaw for many generations. She is also a resident of a region distinguished by a long history of political and social orientation toward Bangkok. In the chapter’s third section, I turn to recent cooperation between the Thai and Lao governments, which have been viewed as representing a new era of regional integration. Paradoxically, perhaps, a large part of this cooperation has been directed towards reducing certain kinds of border crossings, particularly what I term the ‘mobility of the marginal’, such as illegal labouring, smuggling and insurgency. The chapter’s fourth section

Dreaming beyond borders 79 explores how mobility of the marginal in the south-western borderlands of Laos is undertaken in this era of cooperative regulation.

The pre-colonial borderlands: danger, demarcation, relation and incorporation Laay could trace her family line on Don Khiaw back to the 1800s when her father’s mother’s mother was born on what is now the family plot. Her father’s mother, too, was born there. It was in Don Khiaw that this grandmother of Laay’s eventually met a Thai solider during the occupation of Champassak by the Thai in 1940s (an event I discuss below). He had been stationed across the river as part of Thailand’s administration of the area between 1941 and 1946. Laay’s grandmother married him, and it was during those years of Thai administration of the area that Laay’s father, Pho Amnuaay, was born to the couple. Pho Amnuaay was still an infant when the French reclaimed the area that included Don Khiaw. Abruptly, Pho Amnuaay’s father was required to leave Champassak. He asked his new wife to accompany him back to Thailand, but the infant Pho Amnuaay was left with his mother’s mother on Don Khiaw. Pho Amnuaay’s father is now dead, but his mother still resides in Ubon Ratchathani, the largest urban centre on the Thai side of the border that now divides Champassak from Thailand. Pho Amnuaay has four brothers and sisters, all in Thailand. One of his own children, Laay’s brother, left Don Khiaw to live in Ubon Ratchathani with this branch of the family. The family visit each other and exchange gifts when they can, although, due to age and lack of funds, these exchanges are not frequent. This small family history demonstrates the perhaps obvious but still salient point that the decisions about borders made by international treaty and under threat of violence impact on people’s lives. Family bonds exist across borders, but not irrespective of them. The border that slices through the Tai–Lao world of south-western Laos and north-eastern Thailand shapes in very tangible ways how these kin relationships are played out and how this social world is enacted. Mobility and disruption are nothing new in this region. The comment is often made that in pre-colonial Tai polities, the index of power was not simply territory, but people (Gesick 1976, Wolters 1982, Condominas 1990, Thongchai 1994). Nobles measured their power in terms of how many people, villages or muang owed them allegiance. Correspondingly, it was not only land but human bodies that were fought over and marked by leaders. The populace could signal their displeasure with a leader, onerous demands or instability by emigrating (Condominas 1990: 63, Grabowsky 1995: 114).

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Viewed from the leaders’ perspectives, this constant possibility of move ment was a threat to be avoided: rewards were offered to local leaders who could ‘entice’ people to settle and establish rice fields (Gesick 1976: 15). Viewed from the perspective of ordinary people, however, this arrangement indicates a life premised on the constant possibility, if not actuality, of mobility and relocation. The wars and disputes that characterised the precolonial borderlands added a further impetus to movement. Not only were the great centres – such as Ayuthaya and Vientiane – sacked and razed, it was common for the victors to seize the defeated populace and forcibly resettle them closer to the victor’s centre of power (Gesick 1976: 47). The Burmese invasions and the fall of Ayudhya were a turbulent time for the Tai world. Wyatt estimates that during this period, most people were living in a place distant from where they were born (Wyatt 1997). When Siam overran Vientiane in 1778 and again in 1827, hundreds of thousands of people were forcibly relocated across the Mekong River, leaving the left bank virtually depopulated. Siam sought to consolidate this control over bodies with an unpopular measure: the forced tattooing of all freemen in the Lao territories. Sickness also provided an incitement to mobility: cholera outbreaks were a recurring feature of nineteenth-century Southeast Asia, and travellers frequently noted that whole villages or regions had decamped in an effort to avoid disease (Ayonmier 2000: 10, Harmand 1997: 60). Wolters has identified this arrangement as a mandala form of state, where centres of power (muang) with vaguely defined boundaries expanded and contracted according to the efficacy of their leader and competition among them (Wolters 1982: 17). Evans (2002) and Stuart-Fox (1997) have applied this vision of strong centres and vague peripheries in their presentations of the history of Laos. Walker has issued a warning against such a simple telling of the history of the borderlands: he notes that often control over manpower was desired not instead of control over land, but in order to consolidate claims to control over land. Walker has suggested that the borders were not vague due to nonchalance, but dispute, and thus subject to intense interest and intervention (Walker 1999: 63). The history of Laos’ south-western border supports Walker’s argument regarding the paradoxically central role of the borderlands. This history also demonstrates that the borderlands of pre-colonial Tai polities could be experienced in a number of ways: as zones of danger, explicit demarcation, ambiguous relation, or hierarchical incorporation. The region where Don Khiaw is located had been known as the kingdom of Champassak from 1713 to 1945. The house of Champassak came to power when over 3000 refugees fleeing the break-up of Lan Xang in 1707 migrated south (Grabowsky 1995: 112). In the capital of Champassak,

Dreaming beyond borders 81 which is located a few kilometres upstream from Don Khiaw, the refugees found an ageing queen who reputedly offered the rule of her kingdom to the newcomers several years later (Archaimbault 1961, Grabowsky 1995: 112, Simms and Simms 1999: 163). Champassak was bought into the orbit of Siam by Thaksin, who led his armies against Champassak in 1777, and against Vientiane the following year (Gesick 1976: 104). As a centre of Siamese power, surrounding muang offered their allegiance to Siam through Champassak. This included Attapeu and the Boloven Plateau to the east, Stung Treng to the south, Roi Et in the north-west, Salavan to the north, and Ubon Ratchathani in the west (Grabowsky 1995: 113, Simms and Simms 1999: 164). From the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, the Lao population in the Champassak area grew substantially (Grabowsky 1995: 116). This entire region continued to attract refugees fleeing the turbulent break-up of Lan Xang (Vientiane). These refugees commonly followed the Mekong River downstream, confirming the river as the centre of Champassak settlement and interaction (Grabowsky 1995: 114). The power of the kingdom of Champassak was weakened, however, as the Siamese delayed appointing a new king at the death of King Fay Na in 1811 and King Chao Nak in 1851. The Siamese rulers also removed the Kingdom’s palladium, the Crystal Buddha. Champassak’s vassal muang were encouraged to renounce their allegiance to Champassak and report directly to Siam: Ubon Ratchathani did so in 1814, and Muong Khong followed suit (Simms and Simms 1999: 170–72). In the late nineteenth century, strong moves were made to incorporate the Lao muang more solidly into the Siamese state through rationalised administration, standardised education, monastic arrangements, military presence, and eventually a telegraph line from Champassak to Bangkok (Grabowsky 1995: 148, Simms and Simms 1999: 178). At this time, Siam was emulating the colonial administrations observed in Java, India and Singapore (Thongchai 1994: 103). Already the Siamese were turning away from the indeterminacy of the mandala system and attempting to consolidate their borderlands in the image of a modern state (Thongchai 1994: 105). Aymonier, a French explorer travelling in the region a few years before the French pressed their claim for ownership of the area, recorded the vibrant trade and broad reach of this Mekong centred kingdom (Aymonier 2000). Forest products such as wax, hides, as well as cultivated items such as tobacco, safflower dyes, ramie (Boehmeria nivea), and rice were traded for salt, fabric and crockery. The borderlands to the eastern extremity of the kingdom were keenly felt as zones of danger and incivility. In this area, where Champassak’s vassal Attapeu rose into the highlands, the isolation from Bangkok was felt so keenly that the official dates for festivals were

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usually only heard of after the date had passed (Aymonier 2000). The region was reputedly inhabited by ‘savages’, or Highlanders only marginally incorporated into the state, who were regularly raided for slaves. While the eastern border appears to have been characterised by ambiguity and danger, the Kingdom of Champassak to the south – by contrast – ended abruptly with a border marker that was clear to all travellers. The seventeenthcentury Dutch trader Gerard Wusthof notes a very explicit boundary marker at the Khon falls just above what is now the Lao–Cambodian border. It was a plank nailed to a tree with inscriptions in both Khmer and Lao stating that this point marked the boundary between the two kindgoms (Casteleyn 2003: 22). Two hundred and fifty years later, Aymonier also recorded a similarly clear border in this area: between Sambur and Sting Treng Stung Treng with Khmer communities on one side and Lao communities on the other. In between the two communities, there was a kind of no-man’s-land, which was said to be plagued by ‘pirates’ and bandits, who risked undermining the otherwise healthy trade that plied the river (Aymonier 2000: 6). This southern border was a zone of distinct demarcation. To the west, the lands leading to Bangkok were experienced quite differently. The King of Champassak and his tributaries drank the water of allegiance to Siam twice a year, and also delivered regular tribute to Siam. The King of Champassak took pride in parading several white elephants to Bangkok as gifts for the King of Siam. Of one elephant, the Champassak King reportedly stated that during its grand procession from Champassak to Bangkok ‘shelters would be prepared for it along the road, from one end of the kingdom to the other’ (Aymonier 2000: 22). In return, he hoped for bricks and mortar to be sent by Siam to upgrade his home. The King in Bangkok also provided the accoutrements of office for the King in Champassak, such as a box, platter, ewer, silver spittoon and red umbrella. To the west, then, the territory was experienced not so much as a divide but as a continuity of hierarchical incorporation. This hierarchical incorporation is thought to have been well-established by the time of Thaksin’s seizure of Champassak in 1777. Aymonier, for instance, notes a border marker to the west, between Ubon and Bassak, although by the time he records its presence, some of its resonance had been lost. He wrote: ‘This border marker no longer conformed to the present geographic division: The Kingdom of Bassak spread much further’ (Aymonier 2000: 31). Aymonier’s observation of change on this border supports the overall argument made here that there were many forms of borders and borderlands available in pre-colonial Tai-lands. With Taksin’s seizure, and Rama I’s subsequent incorporation of Champassak, the borderlands heading west from Champassak were configured in terms of hierarchical incorporation. Simms and Simms write that from 1809 Rama II (1809–24) and his Ministers devoted every effort to

Dreaming beyond borders 83 creating a ‘Tai land’ made up of all the Tai people, of which Champassak was a small but important part (Simms and Simms 1999: 168). The border to the north, especially that with Vientiane, was of a different order. When Wusthof passed by in 1635, he does not record the presence of Champassak’s independent queen, but instead notes a Vientiane official, who he assumes to be the administrator of the region on behalf of the King of Vientiane. This is despite the chronicles indicating that Champassak at this time was ruled by Nang Pao (Archaimbault 1961). This discrepancy suggests perhaps an uncertain relationship between the two kingdoms. Champassak served as a destination and refuge for people fleeing from Vientiane. While the two kingdoms were related through common vassalage to Bangkok, common language and kinship between their royal families, this commonality gave rise as often to conflict as to cooperation. For instance, it is well known that King Anu of Vientiane’s son Chao Nho was appointed to the throne of Champassak by Bangkok at Anu’s request, and that subsequently this son joined his father in an attack on Siam. However, it is less often acknowledged that Chao Nho – in retreat from both the Siamese army and from Lao families – was refused re-entry into Champassak as the people shut the gates on him, and he was forced to hide in the hills (Simms and Simms 1999: 175). This Vientiane-backed appointment to the Champassak throne was unpopular, and one interpretation of these events is that the population of Champassak took the first opportunity to dispense with him. In pre-colonial Champassak, therefore, we can see clearly that a variety of borderlands were in existence. Some borders were marked by distinct boundary markers and no-man’s-lands. Some were associated with fear, lawlessness and savagery. Other borderlands were associated with rivalry, competition and exchange. The westward borderlands towards Bangkok, meanwhile, were experienced as part of a hierarchical incorporation whereby exchange of tributes, royal regalia, elephants and palladiums criss-crossed the area in a way symbolic of the differential inclusion of Champassak in Bangkok’s sphere. Thus, ideas about fluctuating and vaguely defined borderlands in a mandala scheme do not do justice to this variety and adaptability in border experiences. However, the symbolism and interpretation of the borderlands were soon to change.

Colonialism, conflict and the consolidation of the borderlands In October 1893, France forced Siam to cede all territories on the left bank of the Mekong, slicing the Kingdom of Champassak in two. In 1904, France added to their possessions some territories on the right bank, including the capital of Champassak. The French recognised only the King of Luang Prabang, and demoted the King of Champassak to the status of Governor

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in 1934 (Simms and Simms 1999: 178). The earlier forced resettlement of Lao-speaking people meant that now many more Lao people lived on the Siamese side of the border than in the French territories of Laos, and by some accounts Lao people made up almost half the population of Siam (Toye 1968: 48). Both the French and the Siamese attempted to attract and keep people in their territories through lowered taxes, handouts and force (Thongchai 1994: 165). Until 1907 the French left an open invitation for these resettled Lao to return to the French side of the new border, and many did. As a result, Vientiane regained some of its former clout (Toye 1968: 46). Strong affinities remained between the French and Siamese Lao populations in terms of language, religion, calandrical events, trade and kinship. Even after the French consolidated their claim to Indochina, and perhaps even facilitated by the relative peace that ensued, ‘Lao people mingled freely across their great river’ (Toye 1968: 48). Toye perhaps overstates the peace of this period: from 1901 to 1935, there was a series of rebellions led by phu mii bun (‘people with merit’ or spiritual leaders) in the Champassak area. These were religious and charismatic leaders who challenged the administration on both the Siamese and French sides of the new border (Simms and Simms 1999: 180, Ishii 1986: 182). Grabowsky reports that the aim of the movements was to establish a Lao state independent of both the French and Siamese (Grabowsky 1995: 150), although interpretations of the political motivations of the movements differ (see Pholsena 2006 and Gay 2002). Siamese nationalist premier Phibun Songkhram came to power in 1932 and was implacably opposed to French ambitions in Southeast Asia. In 1935, Siam was publishing maps showing the area of Don Khiaw as part of the ‘territories lost to France’, and denouncing the ‘false frontier of colonialism’ with leaflets and radio broadcasts aimed at French Indochina (Ngaosyvathn 1994: 60–1). This strategy gained particular support in southern Laos ‘where people had always tended to look across the river to Siam rather than upstream to Vientiane’ (Toye 1968: 56). The need for identification papers or residence certificates for people crossing into Siam from French Indochina was suspended (Ngaosyvathn 1994: 60–61). Indeed, commentators at the time record a ‘cordial’ reception of refugees from Indochina by frontier authorities, with the government waiving ‘immigration formalities’ and the public offering relief and donations (Sivaram 1941: 36). In the perception of one writer, ‘[refugees from Indochina] were Thai people and were treated as such’ (Sivaram 1941: 37). Borders, Phibun seemed to have understood, work best to divide and regulate only when powers on both sides recognise and enforce them. With France weakened by German occupation in Europe, Phibun demanded the return of territories to the right of the Mekong, including part of

Dreaming beyond borders 85 Champassak. There followed a military build up on both sides of the border, and then active hostilities. In January 1941, Thai forces pushed across the land border east of Ubon Rathchathani, forcing the French into retreat. In less than a week, they had raised the Thai flag in Champassak province, ‘in a most impressive ceremony attended by the local people’ (Sivaram 1941: 97–98). On 22 January, Champassak town was occupied by Thai troops, and the Prince of Champassak, Boun Oum, made a speech on Thai radio speaking ‘excellent Thai’.6 The Japanese, who had occupied Indochina since 1940 while allowing France to continue to rule for most of the war, brokered a truce. The deepest channel of the river was taken as the dividing line between French and Thai forces in the Mekong area, and both forces withdrew ten kilometres on either side. The neutral zone was occupied by the Japanese. Don Khiaw lay in this neutral zone on the Thai side. Older residents there remember the ‘administration’ (khúm khong) of the Japanese, although Japanese rule did not last long. In the peace deal brokered by the Japanese, the deep channel was confirmed as the border between Thailand and French Laos. Thus, Champassak, along with Sayaboury, were confirmed as returning to Thai control. Don Khiaw fell under the sway of Thailand once again, and the Thai state began the process of making the area ‘Thai’. Health services, relief aid, public lectures and a Thai administration were installed (Sivaram 1941: 130). Older residents of Don Khiaw remember learning to read and write Thai during these years with a Thai school established in the temple. Thai administrators and soldiers were also stationed in the area, and a romance blossomed between the man and woman who were to become Laay’s grandparents. During the period of Japanese occupation, local independence movements had been allowed to form and gain credibility in Indochina. When the Japanese quelled the French resistance attempts in March 1945, they informed the royalties of Indochina that they were now independent members of the Japanese order (Toye 1968: 65). The Lao Issara (Free Lao) led by Prince Phetsarath, declared the union of the Kingdoms of Luang Prabang and Champassak ‘in a single, independent Kingdom of Laos’ (Dommen 1971: 22). Like his Luang Prabang brethren, Prince Boun Oum of Champassak opposed these claims to independence. Prince Boun Oum led a guerrilla resistance along with stray French troops against both Japanese and the Lao Issara in the south (Toye 1968: 65). His pro-French escapades brought him into conflict with Oun Sananikone of the Lao Issara. Sananikone has left an intriguing account of a meeting between himself and Prince Boun Oum at this time (Sananikone 1975: 17). The meeting took place across the river from Pakse.7 Prince Boun Oum explained that he saw the French return to Indochina as inevitable. He furthermore held that Lao independence could only be achieved through cooperation with the French,

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as they would not agree to an independence achieved through force. He felt that the French and Lao Issara needed to join together to fight the Japanese. For his part, Sananikone maintained that total independence was the only goal, and that Boun Oum should join the fight for independence from both the Japanese and the French. The two were not able to resolve their differences, and consequently were ranged on opposing sides of the battle as France reinvaded Laos after the Japanese collapse. Interestingly, Prince Boun Oum had succeeded to Champassak’s throne only in 1945, 11 years after his father had been demoted to the status of Governor in 1934. This sudden reappointment of royalty in Champassak was arranged apparently in a belated attempt by the French to curry local support (Simms and Simms 1999: 214). Prince Boun Oum proved to be a great asset to the French, extending an invitation for the colonists to enter Champassak Province on 14 September 1945, thereby undermining Phetsarath’s declaration of independence. In early 1946, the French forces moved northward, forcing the Lao Issara forces under Sananikone to retreat and finally to flee to Thailand. By the end of 1946, Thailand had been pressured into returning Champassak and Saynaboury to the French. In the same year, Boun Oum handed over sovereign rights to Champassak to the King in Luang Prabang, accepting instead the title of Inspector General of the new Lao nation. For the first time, this move established Laos as a unified entity under a single king, generating in the process considerable resentment in the south (Toye 1968: 74). Fleeing the returning French forces, Viet Minh and Lao Issara members were offered safe haven in Thailand. From there, they were able to organise their resistance, launch raids and disseminate propaganda against the French (Toye 1968: 79). The Lao Issara had had a long-running association with the ‘Free Thai’ movement in Thailand, as both opposed the Japanese occupation (Keyes 1995: 160). Sananikone was a high-ranking member of the Free Thai as well as a Lao Issara member, and considered himself in many ways Thai.8 Powerful factions of the north-eastern Thai (Isan) elite worked with the Free Thai movement to resist the Phibun Songkhram government and put in place the democratic government of Pridi Phanamyong (Keyes 1995: 160). Some of these leaders were also part of Lao pen Lao, a movement campaigning for a unified Lao state including Isan and French Laos. Phibun was returned to power in 1947. While he continued to allow the Indochinese liberation movements to persist on Thai soil until 1949, the pan-Lao movement in Thailand’s north-east was suppressed. Three prominent members of parliament were assassinated in 1948 and another in 1952. Some Lao nationalists fled to Laos (Keyes 1995: 160). On the Lao side of the border, meanwhile, domestic politics soon became polarised between the US-backed right wing, the neutralists, and a left wing

Dreaming beyond borders 87 sympathetic to the Viet Minh. The Mekong Valley in the south of Laos spawned yet another key player: Phoumi Nosovan, a fervent right-wing activist. Phoumi Nosovan had been a member of Lao Pen Lao and returned to Laos after participating in anti-Japanese activities with the Free Thai. Born in Savanakhet to a Muhkdahan family, he was related to and on friendly terms with Marshal Sarit of Thailand (Toye 1968: 145). It was he who led the opposition to Kong Le’s 1960 coup. He based his ‘committee against the coup d’état’ in Savanakhet, where he received aid from both the United States and Thailand. Thailand also supported Phoumi by closing the border against any supplies to Kong Le in Vientiane, thus starving the neutralist of supplies. Toye refers to Phoumi’s rise as ‘a swing to the south, to southern Laos from which came Phoumi and most of his friends, and to Siam’ (Toye 1968: 136). Phoumi appointed Prince Boun Oum of Champassak as the leader of his group, ‘a fact which emphasised the dynastic and regional aspects of a quarrel which Prince Souvannaphouma had already termed a conflict between north and south’ (Toye 1968: 149).9 With hostilities escalating, the border between rightist southern Laos and north-east Thailand was traversed not only by supplies for Phoumi’s forces but eventually by bombing raids into Lao territory. Thailand served as the United State’s ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ (Randolph 1986: 49). In 1964, operation ‘Barrel Roll’ commenced bombing in the east of Laos, and in 1965 operations ‘Steel Tiger’ and ‘Tiger Hound’ were launched targeting the south. The severity of the bombing in Laos is difficult to exaggerate. It is estimated that as much as 5.7 million tonnes of bombs were dropped by the United States in its ‘secret war’ (High 2008). The southern right wing were complicit in this unannounced incursion across the Thai–Lao border. Toye suggests that Phoumi Nosovan even exaggerated reports of Communist threat in order to secure more military and financial aid for himself and his faction (Toye 1968: 127). In this intense air war, Champassak’s Prince had the dubious honour of having a branch of Air America named after him: Boun Oum Air.10 In November 1975, the Pathet Lao and Thai forces clashed, leading to a complete closure of the border by Thailand. With the ascension to power of the Pathet Lao the following month, Thailand continued the policy of trade restrictions. Mayoury and Pheuiphanh have suggested that the border became an ‘ideological boundary’ (Ngaosyvathn 1994: 71). Thailand imposed ‘Blockade, embargo, closed frontiers, abusive taxes, unfair transport fares’ (Ngaosyvathn 1994: 71). Well into the 1980s, Thailand continued to ban the export of 273 ‘strategic items’ from Thailand into Laos, including consumer goods, spare parts and fuel. Despite this, the border was, perhaps inevitably, permeated by some trade. The long-running truck and barter across the

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Mekong, however, was now designated as ‘smuggling’ and ‘illicit trade’, and accordingly these activities were fraught with danger (Walker 1999: 58). Nevertheless, the Thai government also kept the border open in important ways. First, in a move reminiscent of Phibun’s earlier policy, refugees were accepted from Laos with no need to offer proof of their refugee status. Mayoury and Pheuiphanh suggest that Thailand’s aim was to ‘bleed the Indochinese countries white’ (Ngaosyvathn 1994: 95). Don Khiaw residents today report brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, uncles, foster children, even husbands as now living in the United States, Canada, France, Australia and Thailand. Laay has a patrilineal relative who is an Australian. He comes back to Laos occasionally and she enjoys the fashionable clothes that he presents to her by way of a gift on his visits. The Thai–Lao border was also ‘open’ during the period of hostility in a second important sense: the crossings made by insurgent groups that based themselves in Thailand while launching raids into Lao territory. This version of events has been corroborated by residents of Don Khiaw, some of whom said that they had participated in such insurgency activities as they moved in and out of the refugee camp at Ubon Rathchathani. The men who related these stories to me had taken advantage of a refugee repatriation scheme run by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1978 to return to Don Khiaw permanently. In this era of hostility and wariness between the governments of Laos and Thailand, then, the border remained open in important ways, especially for people like the residents of Don Khiaw. For those brave or determined enough to risk the violence of the border, the frontier was essentially permeable. As refugees or rebels, rural residents crossed the border in what might most accurately be termed the mobility of the marginal.

Controlling the border through cooperation Today, there is a new era of cooperation between the governments of Thailand and Laos. Both are members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and both are involved with regional integrative initiatives such as the Greater Mekong Sub-region and the Economic Quadrangle (Walker 1999). In a move symbolic of the shift from ‘battleground’ to ‘marketplace’, the Thai government has agreed to fund a rail link between Vientiane and the bridge across the Mekong at Nong Khai. Agreements have been signed between the Lao government and the Thai government on a series of borderrelated issues, such as labour migration, cross border trade and security. Strikingly, however, a major effort and effect of this era of cooperation is to suppress, through joint endeavour, the mobility of the marginal. This came across clearly in a news report on smuggling across the Mekong:

Dreaming beyond borders 89 Goods smuggling spread widely throughout the 1980s and ’90s, and was mainly caused by limitations on imports and exports of everyday consumer goods. Laos, like Thailand, has made continuous efforts to eradicate the practice. Thanks to the good relationship between the two countries, and the agreement to broaden import and export laws, smuggling has declined since 2000. (Phinith 2006) In the era of cooperation, activities such as smuggling, seeking refugee status, or engaging in undocumented labour migration have been targeted for concerted, and often successful, intervention. In 2004, Hmong claiming to be refugees from Laos began arriving in large numbers in Phetchabun province in the north of Thailand. The Thai government declared these people ‘illegal’ immigrants – a vast turnaround from earlier free-entry policies regarding refugees from Laos. Many of the immigrants have been forcibly handed over to Lao authorities, to the grave concern of human rights organisations such as Amnesty International (Amnesty International, 9 May 2006). Moreover, 16 Lao citizens – survivors of an attack on the Lao side of the Chong Mek–Tho Khet border in 2000 – were extradited from Thailand to Champassak province in July 2004. This followed a successful appeal by the Lao government against an earlier decision to refuse extradition on the grounds that the men would be in serious danger in Champassak. The men had attacked the customs and immigration offices at the border, apparently in an attempt to destabilise the regime. They were arrested in Thailand for illegal entry and illegal possession of firearms in Thailand. These events suggest that Thailand is no longer a refuge for insurgents or a safe destination for those who would claim refugee status. The mobility of the marginal is being curtailed in another important respect: the joint Lao–Thai efforts to control the haemorrhaging of Lao labourers into Thailand’s ‘undocumented’ workforce. One method employed to control this population movement is to establish legally sanctioned methods for Lao people to find work in Thailand. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between the two governments in October 2003 allows for some Lao workers to be employed in Thailand. However, the number permitted is significantly less than the number of Lao presently thought to be working illegally in Thailand. Moreover, this legally sanctioned pathway for migrants submits would-be workers to bureaucratic red tape and requirements designed to ensure that workers return to Laos after a maximum of four years. This includes wages held in trust. Thus, it is clear that cooperation is designed less to facilitate than to regulate people’s movements. The cumulative effect of these examples of inter-state cooperation is that the border has solidified to unprecedented levels. It cannot be said today, as in

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Toye’s description of the colonial era, that ‘Lao people mingled freely across their great river’ (Toye 1968: 48). It is now not an option to display one’s displeasure at a leader by emigrating, nor is it possible to claim ‘refugee’ status in Thailand simply by virtue of being Lao. For the residents of Don Khiaw, therefore, there are now checks on the mobility of the marginal unmatched in the history of the region. This recent solidification of the borderlands is symbolised aptly by the Chong Mek–Tho Khet border crossing. This crossing is the legal avenue into Thailand closest to Don Khiaw, and one I have crossed countless times since first arriving for fieldwork in 2002. The border point was promoted to its current status as an international crossing point in March 1999. While internationally this border is best known for the border skirmish mentioned above, for most Lao its significance lies in the fact that Lao and Thai people are permitted – for a small fee of 1000 kip – to cross the border for one day within a one-kilometre radius of the border without passing passport clearance. A Lao immigration officer explained that the arrangement was necessary because people in the area were ‘phii nong kan (relatives) and you can’t really stop them anyway’. Combined with the Japanese-funded bridge at Pakse, with a feeder road to the border, completed in 2000, this policy has seen a boom in trade at Tho Khet. Lao Immigration officials report that Lao exports are typically primary products such as vegetables and forest products, while Thai exports are ‘everything: food, cosmetics, clothes, electronic goods’. They produced reports stating that in 2001 trade at this border crossing was valued at US$22 million. When I arrived in 2002, Tho Khet was literally swamped by trade. Traders, predominantly women who ran stalls in Pakse or other market centres in Laos, would catch small, cramped, open vans to the border, and hire a cart at the border to fill with Thai products to sell on in Laos. On the Thai side of the border market, stalls were jammed one after another, selling the full array of household and commercial goods, from live fish fingerlings and fertiliser to Thai fruits and packet noodles. The stalls formed a tangled mass – several rows deep – on either side of a single dirt road that bore a constant traffic of carts, buses and pick-up trucks. By contrast, the office where long-term travellers without a one-day pass were required to show their papers to Thai officials in order to obtain an entry or exit stamp was a single-storey affair tucked away down an unassuminglooking dirt path. The markets were so dense that this administrative post was easily missed by the untrained eye, highlighting the way in which the ‘trade’ aspect of the border had visually eclipsed its ‘administrative’ aspect. More than one tourist failed to gain the requisite stamp there, because it seemed more obvious to directly board one of the many conveyances on the main road offering transport to Ubon Ratchathani. Along the road from

Dreaming beyond borders 91 the border leading to Ubon Rathchathani, the police set up check points to inspect people’s papers. At the checkpoints, policemen would stop buses coming from both directions. Those who failed to produce the requisite papers and stamps were detained. While unwitting tourists were sometimes caught unaware, the police’s main target were Lao labourers attempting to enter or exit Thailand without proper documentation. Some of the men from Don Khiaw reported being caught when catching a bus from Ubon Ratchathani to the border crossing. They had no identification with them, and were carrying their entire savings from the trip. The savings were confiscated, and the men deposited on the Lao side of the border. Undeterred, however, the men felt they had little choice but to return to Thailand to try to recoup their losses. The next time, the men were more careful, they told me, depositing their earnings in a bank to be accessed once they were back in Laos. Moreover, they also hired a private vehicle to whisk them past the checkpoint uninterrupted. Once at the border, the confusion of the Chong Mek–Tho Khet border provided a safe haven for returnees. Things have now changed at Tho Khet, however. Beginning in 2003 and nearing completion when I passed by in 2005, a new, multi-storey immigration office now dominates the Thai side of the Tho Khet–Chong Mek border. This building is located in the middle of the single road, so that all traffic must move around it, regulated by heavy boom gates. All public vehicles must stop some distance before the building, so that passengers must approach the border on foot. The market stalls are nowhere to be seen, although they are reportedly now to be found some distance away in Chong Mek town. Today, the chances of a Lao labourer slipping past the border post undocumented is much reduced. Moreover, it seems to be not entirely coincidental that as the relationship between the Lao and Thai governments grows closer, their borders grow more distinct and regulated. In trying to become ‘good neighbours’ the two governments have prioritised the enforcement of ‘good fences’. And, while officially monitored and recorded trade volumes across the border continue to increase, it has been the unofficial mobility of the marginal which has been targeted for elimination.

Mobility in an era of regulation In this era of heightened regulation, mobility across the Thai–Lao border continues. However, such mobility today must negotiate a very particular set of constraints. Lao migrants face certain forms of vulnerability, and in response have extemporised strategies to make their journeys both possible and profitable. In this final section, I will outline how mobility continues in the current setting. Wages, today, are much higher in Thailand than in Laos. For instance,

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while Laay expected to earn 4000 baht11 a month as a domestic worker when we spoke in 2003, the coffee pickers of the Boloven Plateau in the same year earned only 100,000 kip for arduous, dawn to dusk, physical labour. In exchange rates current at that time, 100,000 kip was the equivalent of 400 baht. In other words, Laay expected to earn ten times as much in Thailand as her age-mates were earning in the Plateau. Likewise, in 2003 the going rate for agricultural labourers working on the rice harvest or transplant on Don Khiaw was 10,000 kip (40 baht) a day. The minimum wage rate in Thailand is 140 baht a day, and is even higher in the centres like Bangkok and Chonburi where Don Khiaw labourers typically are destined (184 and 166 baht a day respectively) (Ministry of Labour, Thailand 2006). One of the reasons Lao labourers are attractive to employers in Thailand is because they will work at or below the Thai minimum wage. Part of this willingness to work cheap comes from the poverty of rural Laos itself but it is also the case that their formally ‘illegal’ status exerts a downward pressure on their wages and rights. While I often met return migrants who had been arrested or had their earnings confiscated by Thai police, I never met anyone who had been unable to find work in Thailand. That is, the greatest hurdle faced by Lao labourers in Thailand is not finding work but avoiding the police. While Lao labourers were aware of the dangers that migrating to Thailand placed them in, they also recognised that the risks were difficult to avoid: their citizenship status combined with their poverty left few other choices. Moreover, their exploitation must be considered in light of the alternatives, which are hard work and poverty in Don Khiaw, or lower wages in Laos’ industries or commercial agriculture. But more than this simple calculation of profit versus risk, I have argued in this chapter that Lao youth live in a social world of mobility. Mobility is firmly entrenched in a view of what is possible, desirable and expected in the future. Yet expectations of mobility are also laced with apprehension in terms of the risks associated with it. At border areas, checkpoints, or in police raids of workplaces, undocumented Lao workers in Thailand were at risk of being identified as criminals. Thus, while mobility remains a key feature of the Tai world, it now takes place in a particular context of regulation that fosters certain kinds of mobility and places many would-be migrants in distinctly tenuous positions. Lao migrants employ strategies that help them to circumvent, but not to overcome, these obstacles. I will illustrate these with one final description of the way in which labouring youth in Don Khiaw make their journeys both possible and profitable. In mid-2005, I was visiting a friend on Don Khiaw when Pho Hiian also dropped by. He had paddled his boat a few hundred metres upstream to Mee Ian’s house next-door to collect some wooden planks he had bought from Mee Ian. I asked after his daughter, Nooy, who had left for Bangkok

Dreaming beyond borders 93 several months ago to work in a garment factory. To my surprise, he told me that yesterday she had returned home. This was all the more remarkable, because his son, Win, had returned only a few weeks earlier after seven years working in the fishing industry in Chonburi. Pho Hiian mentioned that both the returnees were going to the market town that day, and invited me to join them. Soon, I was perched atop the wooden planks on Pho Hiian’s boat as we floated down to his house. I found Nooy among a group chatting on the shore. She looked paler than the last time I saw her, and I commented on this. Others interjected that she looked fat. Nooy had arrived home with a group of young people from the island: the evidence was clear among the little brothers and sisters hanging out on the shore, who now clutched new toys or wore new clothes. Deeng, Daaw’s husband, told me that he had also been to Chonburi last dry season, and ‘lived in the sea’. He had worked there for a month and a half, catching crabs. He was paid 600 baht for each kilo, and with this he was able to accumulate 9000 baht to bring home. Nooy helped to carry the planks from the boat to the house, and then reappeared in a new outfit, her hair thrown high in a scrunchie, platform flip flops, full-length denim jeans, and a white T-shirt with pastel blue trim. The insignia on the T-shirt read in English ‘club girl’. Her belt was also pastel blue, decorated with silver studs and chains, and pastel pink flowers. Nooy’s brother Win showed up in a new-looking outfit, too: a bright pink shirt decorated with flowers and scenes of Thai dancers. When I commented on it, he said it was a sua thale (sea shirt), and in its loose-fitting gaudiness, it did resemble a Hawaiian shirt. To go with it, he wore dark denim jeans. Daaw, Lert, Nooy and I set off on the 20-minute ride to the nearby market town, Muang Seen. Their main purpose in going to the market town was to collect money, from what they called simply ‘the bank’. Any visitor to Muang Seen will know that it houses no ‘bank’ in the strict sense of the term. Its dusty, unpaved streets are lined with a series of open-air stores and some guesthouses but it is not an administrative centre and does not house any branches of Laos’ official financial institutions. On our arrival, Daaw, Lert and Nooy led me to what seemed from the outside like any of the other stores, complete with a selection of vegetables, tinned goods, sweets for donation on holy days and other basic supplies. However, inside was a wide space with a bench and mat for people to sit on. There were several people sitting there already when we arrived, most facing a large flat-screen TV with remarkably good reception. Some metres back and to the left of the TV, the mee khaa (trader) presided, surrounded by telephones. She had one large landline telephone, and I counted at least seven mobile phones, each reclining in its own miniature deckchair. The trader handed me a business card, which listed the ten phone numbers on

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which she could be reached. She explained that part of her business was to allow people to place calls on her mobile phones. International calls were 8000 kip per minute, regardless of destination. However, the main part of her business was to pass on money that had been deposited in her account at the Agriculture Bank in Thailand on behalf of returning migrants. Nooy placed a call to her former employer in Thailand. At first no one answered, and we had to wait about an hour while she kept trying. When she did manage to make contact, she told the office of her employer to deposit her wages in the mee khaa’s bank account. We had to wait several hours for this to happen. Meanwhile, the mee khaa was dealing with several customers at once. On the phone to the Agricultural Bank in Thailand at one point, she asked after Nooy’s money by saying: ‘Don Khiaw money, is there any money for Don Khiaw?’ Nooy’s money had not gone through at that point, but the mee khaa learned that there was some other money for Don Khiaw. The mee khaa asked Daaw, ‘Who is Phukhong?’ ‘That’s my little brother. That would be money for Suk. I’ll collect it,’ Daaw replied. The mee khaa spoke on the phone for a moment to the bank, insisting to the person on the other end ‘deposit the money with me’. Finally, the mee khaa heard on the telephone that Nooy’s money had been deposited. Lert was also collecting money, although his had already been deposited and he simply needed to collect it. The mee khaa produced a large bag of baht and three envelopes. She wrote a name and an amount on each, and then slipped the money inside. Nooy’s envelope contained about 7000 baht, Lert’s about 9520 baht, and Daaw’s about 4000 baht. About 50 baht was paid to the mee khaa, for the cost of the telephone calls. On the way home, Lert and Nooy bought some more wood for their parents’ house extensions – carved balustrades for the veranda area. Daaw bought some ice-cream for her children back in Don Khiaw and put them in a cooler she had brought along and filled with ice. She also bought some soup, some shoes for her daughter and a new sin (wrap-around skirt). Cross-border excursions seeking profit, personal fulfilment or adventure, then, continue among rural Lao, even in this era of heightened border regulation. To subvert some of the dangers they are subjected to, these migrants have developed partial remedies to their vulnerability. Laay’s friend, Ten, who left to work in a Bangkok factory, was saving her first four months’ earnings in an attempt to purchase a Thai identification card clandestinely. Other labourers, such as Kong, were able to purchase one of the migrant worker cards offered by the Thai government to register undocumented workers. Savvy workers now use a ‘bank’ to remit their earnings home, rather than carry it in cash across the dangerous border. Each of these measures, however, represents an extra cost to Lao labourers who come

Dreaming beyond borders 95 from already poor backgrounds and earn already low wages. Borders do not simply regulate licit trade and mobility: their enforcement also creates markets in illicit trade and mobility. However, it is important not to confuse the stop-gap remedies with the security and surety allowed by effective state-sanctioned legitimacy. Borders, as they stand today, are indisputably one of the most powerful forces keeping poor people in poor places. The skilful strategising of the poor and even profiteering in response does not mitigate this fact. Borders, as they are experienced by the residents of Don Khiaw, are evidently about keeping poor people in poor places. The message of the – inevitably paltry – development interventions seen in Don Khiaw seemed to be: ‘You stay there; we will bring development to you.’ However, if the people of Don Khiaw seek to move to more prosperous spaces in an attempt to improve their situation, they are classed as illegal. This is the paradox which underlies the development industry: the industry promises improvement and prosperity to the poor, but only if the poor promise to stay in poor places, and abide by the regulatory regime which systematically allows for their vulnerability. Before I conclude, I should make one further point about the khon song, migration agents like En as described in the opening section. The agents give no guarantees of finding work for their passengers – they only offer a delivery service and on arrival the Lao labourers are responsible for finding their own employers. Some labourers established positive and long-lasting contacts with employers. They worked for years for these employers, accumulating savings in bank accounts and making periodic return journeys to their homes on Don Khiaw. Others had less luck – several found work only to be caught during police raids of their workplace, arrested and deported. These workers felt the loss of the 4000 baht investment in the migration agent’s fee for transport and passing the border. But, otherwise, there was no animosity towards the migration agents: they were not associated with slavery or the sex industry. Agents were often personal friends, relatives or well-known neighbours from the region. It is interesting to note that the activities of En and other khon song fit into Interpol’s definition of ‘people smugglers’ who ‘smuggle human beings for financial gain’ (Interpol, 24 November 2005). This organisation concludes that people smuggling is ‘not only a transnational crime, but also an enormous violation of human rights and a contemporary form of slavery’ (Ibid.). There is a slippery slope here where concerns with ‘people smuggling’ slide into concerns over ‘people trafficking’ leading ultimately to the condemnation as ‘slavery’ of the everyday tactics used by the marginal to manoeuvre within a regulatory regime that offers few alternatives. In this conflation, it seems that smuggling itself is the crime against the marginal, the act which creates risk and exploitation.

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I would like to suggest, in light of the history and ethnography presented here of the Thai–Lao border, that it is not people ‘smuggling’ but the regime of citizenship which creates the conditions for the exploitation of Lao migrants. Indeed, it is impossible to conceive of any kind of smuggling without the presence of borders. It is because the borders have become solidified and enforced that it is now significant that Lao people do not, by and large, possess a Thai identity card. Without this card, Lao people have no formal right to work in Thailand, and must rely on the goodwill of employers. They cannot expect police protection, but instead police harassment. Without this card they cannot organise to claim fair working conditions or fair pay. The problem is not migration agents – En with her modest business ferrying friends and neighbours to Thailand. The problem is the regulation of a border which creates conditions of illegality in which exploitations is possible and, indeed, arguably normal.

Conclusion: dreaming beyond borders What would a borderless world look like, a world with no passports, checkpoints or customs? Imagine a world without national economies, and thus without national deficits, balances of payments, duties or quotas, imports or exports, national unemployment figures, or Gross Domestic Products, and no growth figures to measure from the Gross Domestic Product. Then there could be no Least Developed Countries, and no G8. Without borders there cannot be smuggling, invasions, border infractions or cross-border incursions. It is a stretch to even imagine such a world. Certainly it would be a world immensely different to the world that Laay and the other residents of Don Khiaw and their contemporaries – including you and me – now inhabit. The fact is that today, borders are constantly at play. Far from visions of a borderless world, the regime of citizenship, viewed from Don Khiaw, appears to be on the ascendant. In fact, I have argued that citizenship is one of the most important systems of inequality in today’s world. However, in this conclusion, I want to stress that simply because the world is not borderless does not mean that we – Lao rural residents, academics, activists, concerned citizens – need stop imagining a world that is so. In fact, I think it is imperative that we do. Laay’s imaginings of her trip to Thailand were rich with speculation, hope, inventiveness and desire. Can we, like Laay, dream beyond borders? In this chapter I have drawn out some of the more deleterious aspects of borders. I have mentioned their efficiency at keeping poor people in poor places, and their effectiveness in keeping poor people poor. Apparent too is their habit of criminalising poor people, and penalising those whose crime essentially is to seek to exchange their labour for the best price. What is

Dreaming beyond borders 97 more, in criminalising those people the border regime exposes these already vulnerable people to the dangers of other criminal elements, such as police on the take or unscrupulous employers. The border regime creates an order based not on merit or effort but on the papers one carries. It enforces a global hierarchy of citizenship, a hierarchy that today is perhaps one of the most powerful forces separating humanity into differentiated classes. By building these observations through a historical and social analysis of one place, Don Khiaw, it has been my intention to demonstrate that the regime of citizenship is not only linked to poverty and vulnerability, but also that it is not inevitable. Historically, the enforcement of the border at Champassak is relatively recent. While recent events have made the border a very real and important factor in local lives, it is important not to be overwhelmed, either perceiving the regime of citizenship as inevitable or so pervasive that it is invisible. People have not always been ordered according to their papers, and perhaps it is now time to consider whether they ought to be.

Notes 1 ‘Don Khiaw’ is the name I will use for the island where I conducted fieldwork for 16 months during 2002 and 2003. The name for this place and all participants in the research have been altered to protect confidentiality. 2 Literally, ‘people who send’; perhaps the best translation is ‘migration agents’. 3 The term laan covers a broad range of relatives in the next generation, including grandchildren or the children of siblings. 4 Literally, ‘there is no one in the house’. 5 A neighbouring island. 6 The ambiguity of the borderlands is indicated by this commentary at the time: ‘The fall of Champasakdi City was an occasion for nation-wide rejoicing and Bangkok welcomed the announcement with great popular enthusiasm. The Ruler of Champasakdi had always remained a friend of Thailand. He was a Thai himself by racial connections and social inclination and the Ruler’s son who was bought up under French tutelage and deliberately prevented from getting friendly with the Thais, proved himself to be a real Thai when he visited Bangkok sometime after the incorporation of Champasakdi into the Thai Kingdom and broadcast over the radio in excellent Thai. The occupation of Champasakdi was no annexation of territory; it was merely a reunion of people of the same flesh and blood, same language, same culture and same religion, who were forcibly separated by circumstances beyond their control at the time.’ (Sivaram 1941: 97–9) 7 This location is significant. The village across the river from Pakse is now part of Laos, but at the time of this meeting it was still under Thai administration. Sananikone notes that Boun Oum often crossed the river, and it is evident that Sananikone did likewise, with no hindrance posed by the river’s formal status as a border. At this stage, the border was not a barrier to the everyday movements of local residents. This is also evident in the movements of European or American

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H. High ‘advisors’ present in the area at this time (e.g. Kemp 1961, Sananikone 1975) who evidently crossed the river border without regard for the formalities of documentation or authorisation. He wrote of his time with the Free Thai: ‘The whole time that we had worked underground together, we had felt close friendship and were always ready to sacrifice our lives to help others. We never talked about whether we were Lao or Thai, but as soon as the enemy was defeated we thought of our personal benefit immediately, which split the Free Lao from the Free Thai, especially to the benefit of the Thai side’ (Sananikone 1975: 22). This appointment is particularly interesting given that Phoumi Nosovan had reportedly abducted Prince Boun Oum at gunpoint in Savanakhet in 1946 (Sananikone 1975: 27). At that time, Boun Oum had supported the French, while Phoumi was fighting against them. Against the new threats in the 1960s of the left wing and the Vietnamese, Nosovan and Boun Oum were perhaps reconciled. Boun Oum Air (BOA) was ostensibly under Boun Oum’s ownership, and staffed by Asian crews in order to provide ‘plausible deniability’ should a plane be shot down (Conboy 1994). The airline flew missions such as resupplying road watch teams in Mu Gia pass, transmission gathering and reconnaissance missions before losing their contract to the CIA in 1967. Laay had arrived at this expectation by speaking to returned migrants and the khon song. I collected similar estimations from the numerous other would-be or return migrants that I spoke to, many reporting even higher figures. It is possible that some inflation of the wages expected has been caused by return migrants exaggerating their successes, or migrant agents overstating the benefits of working in Thailand. According to 2006 minimum wage rates, if a person worked in a Bangkok factory six days a week for a month at minimum wage, they could expect to earn 4316 baht, so these figures may not be as inflated as they appear at first glance. On the other hand, labour activists estimate that only a fraction of labourers in Thailand are paid the minimum wage.

Bibliography Amnesty International (2004) Fear of torture/fear for safety/unfair trial. http://web. amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGASA260032004?open&of=ENG-LAO (Accessed 8 January 2004). —— (2006) Urgent Action, Laos: Further information on forcible return/ arbitrary detention/torture/ill-treatment. http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ ENGASA260032006?open&of=ENG-LAO (Accessed 14 May 2006). Archaimbault, C. (1961) L’Historie de Campassak. Journal Asiatique 249(4). Aymonier, E. (2000) Isan Travels: Northeast Thailand’s economy in 1883–1884. Translated by Walter E. J. Tips. Bangkok: White Lotus Press. Casteleyn, P. (ed.) (2003) Strange Events in the Kingdoms of Cambodia and Laos (1635–1644). Translated, annotated and introduced by Carool Kerten. Bangkok: White Lotus Press. Conboy, K. (1994) War in Laos. Carrollton, Texas: Squadron/Signal Publications. Condominas, G. (1990) From Lawa to Mon, from Saa’ to Thai: historical and anthropological aspects of Southeast Asian social spaces. G. Wijeyewardene (ed.). Translated by S. Anderson, M. Magannon, and G. Wijeyewardene. An occasional paper of the Department of Anthropology in association with the

Dreaming beyond borders 99 Thai-Yunnan Project, Research School of Pacific Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra. Dommen, A. (1971) Conflict in Laos: the politics of neutralization. New York: Praeger. Evans, G. (2002) A Short History of Laos: the land in between. Australia: Allen and Unwin. Gay, Bernard (2002) Millenarian movements in Laos, 1895–1936: depictions by modern Lao historians. In Mayoury Ngaosrivathana and Kennon Breazeale (eds). Breaking New Ground in Lao History: essays on the seventh to twentieth centuries. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books. Gesick, L. M. (1976) Kingship and political integration in traditional Siam, 1767– 1824. A thesis presented to the faculty of the graduate School of Cornell University in Partial fulfilment for the degree of doctor of Philosophy. May. Grabowsky, V. (1995) ‘The Isan state up to its integration into the Siamese state’ in Volker Grabosky (ed.) Regions and National Integration in Thailand 1892–1992. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Grabowsky, V. and A. Turton (2003) The Gold and Silver Road of Trade and Friendship: the McLeod and Richardson Diplomatic Missions to the Tai states in 1837. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books. Harmand F. J. (1997) Laos and the Hill Tribes of Indochina. First published in French as articles in Le Tour du Monde 1878–79. Bangkok: White Lotus. High, Holly (2008) ‘Violent landscape: Global explosions and Lao life-worlds’ Global Environment 1(1): 58–81. Interpol (2005) ‘People Smuggling.’ http://www.interpol.int/Public/THB/ PeopleSmuggling/Default.asp Last modified. (Accessed 15 May 2006). Ishii, Y. (1986) Sangha, State, and Society: Thai Buddhism in History. Translated by Peter Hawkes. Monographs of the center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press. Kemp, P. (1961) Alms for Oblivion. London: Cassell. Keyes, C. (1995) ‘Hegemony and resistance in Northeastern Thailand’ in Volker Grabosky (ed.) Regions and National Integration in Thailand 1892–1992. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, pp. 154–82. Kipnis, A. (2004) ‘Anthropology and the theorisation of citizenship’, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 5(3): 257–78. Ministry of Labour, Thailand (2006) Announced Minimum Wage Rate increased for 2006. http://eng.mol.go.th/statistic_01.html (Accessed 14 May 2006). Ngaosyvathn, Mayoury and Ngaosyvathn, Pheuiphanh (1994) Kith and Kin Politics: the relationship between Laos and Thailand. Manila, Philippines and Wollongong, Australia: Journal of Contemporary Asia Publishers. Phinith, L. (2006) Laos–Thailand: Open borders ease smuggling. http://www. newsmekong.org/laos-thailand_open_borders_ease_smuggling (Accessed 17 May 2006). Pholsena, Vatthana (2006) Post-War Laos: the politics of culture, history, and identity. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. Randolph, R. S. (1986) The United States and Thailand: alliance dynamics, 1950– 1985. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California-Berkeley. (Research Papers and Policy Studies no. 12). Sananikone, O. (1975) Lao Issara, the Memoirs of Oun Sananikone. Translated by J Murdoch. Ithaca, New York: Southeast Asia Program, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University.

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Sassen, S. (2000) ‘Spatialities and temporalities of the global: elements for a theorization’, Public Culture 12(1): 215–32. Simms, P. and Simms, S. (1999) The Kingdoms of Laos: six hundred years of history. Surrey: Curzon. Sivaram, M. (1941) Mekong clash and Far East Crisis: a survey of the ThailandIndochina conflict and the Japanese mediation and their general repercussions on the Far Eastern situation. Bangkok: Thai commercial Press. Stuart-Fox, M. (1997) A History of Laos. Cambridge; New York; Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Thongchai Winichakul (1994) Siam Mapped: a history of the geo-body of a nation. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Toye, H. (1968) Laos: buffer state or battleground. London, New York (etc): Oxford University Press. Walker, A. (1999) The Legend of the Golden boat: regulation, trade and traders in the borderlands of Laos, Thailand, China and Burma. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Wolters, O. W. (1982) History, Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives. Singapore: Institute for Southeast Asian Studies. Wyatt, D. K. (1997) ‘History and directionality in the early nineteenth-century Tai world’ in Anthony Reid (ed.) The Last Stand of Asian Autonomies: responses to modernity in the diverse states of Southeast Asia and Korea, 1750–1900. London: Macmillan Press.

8

Conclusion: are the Mekong frontiers sites of exception? Andrew Walker

In 1994 and early 1995 I lived on the Mekong River border dividing Thailand and Laos. My base was the northern Thai trading town of Chiang Khong which was experiencing a boom as a result of the increase in trade that followed the official re-opening of the border in 1989. I was conducting doctoral research on cross-border trade between northern Thailand, northern Laos and southern China. In the resulting book, The Legend of the Golden Boat (1999) I suggested that much of the contemporary rhetoric about borderland liberalisation was misplaced. In fact, I argued, the open borders of the mid-1990s provided more opportunities for profitable state regulation than the closed borders of the preceding decades. This point was made to me most clearly by a Lao customs officer who had experienced, first hand, the proliferation of state intervention in cross-border trade. ‘When the border was closed my job was easy,’ he said, ‘there was nothing for us to do. But now I’m working harder than ever.’ My questioning of the seemingly natural relationship between open borders and state deregulation was part of a broader questioning of the standard historical stories that are written about borders in this part of the world. The standard account goes something like this. In the pre-colonial period, state power was directed at the control of people rather than the control of territory and, as such, the borders of polities were not demarcated but characterised by ambiguous zones of competing influence and large areas of neglected terrain. This pre-colonial territorial nonchalance is said to have been displaced by colonialism and the formation of modern nation states. Previously fluid spatial practices were displaced by the unambiguous demarcation of national borders and the modern state’s insistence on exclusive sovereignty within its demarcated territory. Borderland residents, who previously moved freely from one polity to another, found their traditional homelands dissected by modern state borders. But this modernist era of demarcation has itself been displaced by post-modern connections. The third phase of this history of the borderlands is often described in terms of a return to the more flexible

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practices of the pre-modern era. Since the late 1980s, globalisation, the end of the Cold War and a spate of bilateral and multilateral agreements have witnessed a significant expansion in cross-border trade, investment and movement. For some, this amounts to both a decline in state power and a re-establishment of more traditional connections and forms of social identification. An interesting recent statement of this standard historical narrative is provided by Sara Davis (2006: 92) in her discussion of the role of Buddhist monks in the creation and maintenance of pan-Tai ethnicity in the upper-Mekong borderlands: Before the twentieth century [Phase 1], the Tai monastic network held together a group of independent small polities. Tai societies … were run by fluid, consensus-based systems connecting several small capitals. While they paid tribute to several empires, these small kingdoms were not actually incorporated into larger empires until the mid-twentieth century. The monastic network helped these multiple centres exchange information and thus helped hold them together, creating a multicentred region. Subsequent national domination of ethnic minorities [Phase 2], while temporarily forcing this Buddhist network underground, did not eradicate it but instead created fertile conditions for its revival as a conduit for pan-ethnic flows [Phase 3]. In The Legend of the Golden Boat I took a rather different perspective on these three phases of borderlands history. I started by arguing that territorial borders were far more important in the pre-colonial era than many commentators had suggested (Walker 1999: 43–44). Pre-colonial polities sought to secure control over natural resources, trade routes and population settlements and it was inevitable that they would draw demarcation lines between them. Of course, these lines of demarcation were often disputed and they changed regularly but boundary changes as a result of dispute should not be mistaken for territorial nonchalance. In this volume a strong indication of the importance, and difficulties, of administering pre-colonial boundaries is provided in the contributions on Vietnam by Emmanuel Poisson and Bradley Davis. Both chapters demonstrate that pre-modern polities strove to achieve stable and well-administered frontiers with their neighbours and that the maintenance of a stable frontier often involved collaborative arrangements with local power holders. In addition, the chapter by Stan Tan provides a fascinating insight into how local boundaries may have been constituted. He quotes a short Mnong Gar verse that sets out, with considerable cartographic panache, the boundaries of the village of Sarluk. It was, perhaps, precisely the micro-boundaries of the most distant districts and villages that, when combined, formed the boundary of the larger polity itself (Wijeyewardene

Conclusions 103 1991). However, Tan’s example also points to the likely diversity of local practice and given this it would be wise to take the advice offered by Holly High who suggests that the pre-modern Mekong region was characterised by different types of borderlands, some with ‘distinct boundary markers’, others with ambiguous zones of ‘rivalry, competition and exchange’ and others with more graduated spatial systems of ‘hierarchical incorporation’. In The Legend of the Golden Boat I also questioned the characterisation of modern state boundaries as closed and inflexible. The colonial and modern history of the Mekong borderlands is much more complex than that. The colonial treaty between France and Siam certainly established a cartographically impressive line of demarcation along the Mekong River but implementation of the colonial regime involved much more than mapmaking. For example, the French made some efforts to redirect Lao trade away from Siamese townships and towards the major trading centres of Vietnam. However, these attempts to enforce an Indochinese trade boundary were largely unsuccessful given the close integration between Siamese and Lao trading systems. It did not take long for French officials to recognise the local importance of economic connections across the border and in some cases they went to considerable lengths to encourage them (Walker 1999: 46–50, 2008). At a later stage in the borderlands history, during the Cold War stand-off between Thailand and Laos, there certainly were times when border closure was strictly enforced (with a real risk of death for those who attempted to test the aim of Thai and Lao border guards). But this was a relatively brief and exceptional period, and it should not be taken as iconic of the modern history of borders in the region. In fact, even during the Cold War era of supposedly closed borders there were plenty of places were border trade, investment and social contact remained healthy, in some cases reaching unprecedented levels (Walker 1999: 51–62). High’s examination in this volume of the border between southern Laos and Thailand also illustrates the importance of modern pragmatism and flexibility. She shows that various motives encouraged a de-emphasising of the border in different historical periods: the pan-Thai sentiments of Thai leaders in the 1940s; the anti-Communist military objectives of the American–Thai allies in the 1960s and 1970s; and the desire of the Thai government to support an exodus from Laos in the years following the 1975 Pathet Lao victory. In writing accounts of the modern borders of nation-states it is a mistake to put too much emphasis on specific nationalist ideologies of impermeable boundaries without examining the various motives and pragmatic constraints that have influenced border administration. The third phase of borderlands history is often described in terms of liberalisation and reconnection. Business commentators such as Ohmae

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(1995) speak confidently about the emergence of borderless regional economies and the reduced importance of state economic leadership. The Asian Development Bank (2003) enthusiastically promotes a regionalist agenda of ‘competitiveness, connectivity and community’ in its vision for a Greater Mekong Sub-region. And those with more cultural orientations refer to the re-establishment of social and religious connections between the dispersed members of trans-border ethnic communities (for example, Cohen 2001, Davis 2006, Horstmann and Wadley 2006). These are certainly important trends in the Mekong region given the massive investments in transport infrastructure and the rapid increase in cross-border interaction since the early 1990s. But it would be a mistake to assume that this represents a reduction in state regulatory power. In the Legend of the Golden Boat I argued that the formation of a sub-regional trading zone on the upper Mekong (the ‘Economic Quadrangle’) represented a new phase of borderlands regulation with state agencies and local officials playing an active role in promoting, directing and taxing cross-border trade (Walker 1999: 87–92). Kyoko Kusakabe’s paper in this volume illustrates some of these points nicely. She shows how an increase in regional trade has created new sources of income and increased the status and social freedoms for female traders working the borders between Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Burma. But at the same time these benefits have been mitigated by the ‘unwelcome advances by predatory state interests, all seeking their cut’. Formalisation of customs and immigration facilities along the border has brought traders more fully within the state’s regulatory domain and has also created new opportunities for informal extractions: ‘Prior to 2000, the women were paying 20 baht for every basket of fish they brought into Thailand. Now they pay 100–200 baht depending on the arom (mood) of the official.’ And this is just one of the estimated 27 payments that must be made to get the fish to market in Thailand! Similar arguments are presented by High in her discussion of the ‘recent solidification of the borderlands’. So, if the simplified ‘three-phase’ version of borderlands history – from open to closed and then open again – is unsatisfactory, what can be proposed in its place? A useful alternative, which is the approach taken in this volume, is to produce locally and temporally specific accounts of the ongoing interplay between restricting and enabling practices in the borderlands. Simplified accounts of the modern rise and post-modern fall of national borders may highlight some very broad trends but they are highly unlikely to capture the extent of human inventiveness on the frontier.

Conclusions 105

Border politics The standard narrative that modern state-making involved the creation of rigid borders also informs a view that border crossing represents a challenge to the authority of the state and the modernist project of state formation. This position has been eloquently described in Tagliacozzo’s (2005: 123) fine account of smuggling across the long boundary between Dutch and British possessions in insular Southeast Asia. Tagliacozzo provides a rich history of the interplay between the colonial state project of boundary building and the trangressive project of smuggling that ‘continually threatened to tear it down’. During the colonial period the border was ‘quickly hardening, with dire consequences for politics, trade, and movement for a wide range of local actors [but] [r]esistance to state formation in the periphery and the laying of hard and fast boundaries was determined and swift’ (Tagliacozzo 2005: 366). In this account, smuggling is described as a form of border subversion that took place away from the ‘searching eyes and reach of the colonial state’ steadfastly avoiding the ‘apparatus of state power’ (Tagliacozzo 2005: 365). Natural resources ‘became items to be traded after dark, when colonial border-guards and provincial officials were asleep in their district houses’ (Tagliacozzo 2005: 371). What we have here is an eloquent statement of the view that the establishment of modern borders has involved a protracted struggle between demarcating states and recalcitrant local communities. However, there is an alternative approach that I find considerably more plausible. This approach takes a much less unitary approach to state practice and looks at the many different ways in which state agencies and officials are embedded in the social and economic networks of the frontier. Working on the northern Thai–Lao border I found that state officials and local traders are involved in forms of collaborative regulation that both facilitate trade and, at the same time, restrict entry by potential competitors keen to capture a share of the profits. More recent research I have undertaken in the colonial archives indicates that French colonial officials on the border sought to influence administrative and economic affairs not by imposing or enforcing the regulatory framework decreed by their masters in Hanoi or Paris but by inserting themselves into the volatile local political scene (Walker 2008). Poisson’s account in this volume of the use of local strongmen to assist in the administration of the frontier also provides some indication of the historical depth of this embedding. This was a form of pre-colonial collaboration that extended well into the colonial era with members of ethnic minority families appointed to key positions within the provincial administration. Poisson suggests that this colonial practice may have been influenced by Chinese administrative models in which power was granted to local Tay chiefs, ‘thereby achieving wider political and economic stability’. Moving to a more

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recent era, Tan tells us that land administration in the Central Highlands of Vietnam was influenced by ‘local Highland custom’. Rather than facilitating a land grab by kinh migrants, central government decrees recognised local claims to land and sought to introduce some aspects of traditional land regulation into modern procedures for land sales. However, perhaps most revealing in Tan’s account is the role of local officials in irregular land transactions which involved all sorts of dubious deals with Highlanders, kinh settlers and even French plantation owners. This is a good illustration of the potential for the proliferation of collaborative state practice on the frontier. There is, however, a risk of understating the importance of power differentials – and outright repression – in this emphasis on collaborative administration. In the Legend of the Golden Boat I focused on the forms of collaborative state regulation entered into by traders, transport operators and entrepreneurs. But as Sturgeon (2004: 464) has suggested, this may be taking an overly benign view of local people’s interactions with states (and markets). The people I was studying were all relatively powerful and organised and they were probably much more capable of negotiating favourable deals with state officials than very small-scale traders, cross-border labourers or members of some ethnic minority groups. I paid insufficient attention to the importance of both class and ethnicity in influencing the prospects of those attempting to cross the border. By contrast, the accounts by Kusakabe and High in this volume show that there is considerable potential for power differentials between state officials and border-crossers to result in outright exploitation. While I would maintain that even in some of the most exploitative situations there is room for some degree of negotiation – Kusakabe provides some good illustrations of the strategies of the desperate – there is no doubt that state action can place substantial restrictions on the poor in their pursuit of livelihoods on the frontier. The ‘mobility of the marginal’, to use High’s term, can be vulnerable to the heavy hand of state regulation.

A site of exception? In recent years a new, and potentially productive, way of talking about borders and frontiers of state power has emerged both in Asia and in others parts of the world. As a starting point this new approach rejects the notion that globalisation undermines the authority of states and their power to regulate national borders. But rather than arguing that the state remains an all-powerful regulatory entity, this new approach seeks to disaggregate the state and to focus on its diverse and dispersed practices. These are exactly the types of practices that are documented within this volume and which, as Gainsborough notes in the Introduction, ‘provide plenty of ammunition for thinking about the state in non-unitary terms’. But how is this diversity of

Conclusions 107 state practice in relation to external and internal borders to be conceptualised? Several writers have suggested that borders can be thought of as sites of ‘exception’ where some distinctive forms of state practice emerge. The concept of ‘exception’ is complex and requires a brief diversion in the interests of clarification. The Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben has proposed that modern political life increasingly involves recourse to the ‘state of exception’. His most famous illustration of the concept is rather esoteric. It relates to the ancient Roman concept of homo sacer by which a person guilty of certain crimes is excluded from the legal protections of citizenship and can be killed by anyone (Agamben 1998). Agamben drew on this ancient concept to propose that the exercise of sovereign power involves the ability to declare that some subjects lie outside the rule of law – they become ‘bare life’ devoid of any legal recognition. Agamben’s (2005) more recent contribution explores the state of exception involved in the extraordinary detention powers enacted in the United States in the wake of September 11. He traces the development of the modern ‘state of exception’ to Napoleon’s ability to declare a ‘state of siege’ (whether or not there was an actual military threat), whereby the military commander assumed the powers normally exercised by civil authority (Agamben 2005: 4–5). Agamben (2005: 2) argues that ‘the voluntary creation of a permanent state of emergency … has become one of the essential practices of contemporary states, including so-called democratic ones.’ These ideas have proven to be attractive for some writers involved in recent explorations of borders, frontiers and the ‘margins’ of state power. In a theoretically rich, but convoluted, discussion of the ‘state and its margins’, Das and Poole (2004) suggest that the exception can be identified in contemporary state practice in two ways. First, it is evident in the forms of extrajudicial power, violence and authority that lie outside formally defined state power but are often closely connected to it. Examples of such figures include the Peruvian gamonal, or local strongman, who represents the state through both particular forms of incivility and modes of violence that are marked as illegal…; Columbian paramilitary forces that act both as an extension of the army and as conduits for the flow of arms to drug lords or plantations…; and brokers who inhabit the economic frontiers. (Das and Poole 2004: 14) These exceptional forms of power – which blur the distinction between legal and illegal, formal and informal – are often most visible at the edges of state power but they are also to be found throughout the state structure. For Das and Poole the exception also emerges in the times and places

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when identity must be established, such as when travel documents must be produced at border checkpoints. These are exactly the sorts of sites described by Kusakabe and High in this volume. Establishing identity, or the right of passage, can be a highly uncertain business given the state’s sometimes arbitrary non-recognition of documents and the fact that many people lack access to the necessary paperwork. Given these uncertainties, literal and metaphorical checkpoints can be productive of exception when citizens are not recognised as such and are reduced to ‘bare life’ by the regulatory actions of those who police boundaries. In the Asian context, the ‘state of exception’ has been taken up most fully by Aihwa Ong (2006) in Neoliberalism as Exception. Whereas some influential studies of the state focus on processes of standardisation and homogenisation (for example, Scott 1998), Ong is more interested in the state’s production of diversity and difference through various forms of ‘neo-liberal’ governance. She rejects the view that neo-liberalism involves a reduced role for the state and examines the strategies that Asian states have adopted to deal with territory and citizenship in new ways. ‘Graduated sovereignty’ is the term that Ong (2006: 78) uses to refer to a state’s treatment of its national territory differentially according to its position within the global market. Many parts of the national territory are subject to the usual rule of law while others, such as special administrative regions, semiautonomous zones, free trade and investment enclaves, and some border crossings are governed by special arrangements. These territorial exceptions often involve a ‘thinning’ of normal regulatory practice and the regulatory empowerment of non-state actors, much like the strongmen described by Das and Poole (Ong 2005: 90–91). According to Ong (2005: 97), the recent pursuit of regionalism by Asian states is not based on cooperation between national entities but on ‘limited groupings of sites’ that transcend national borders. ‘The structural logic of globalisation’ Ong (2005: 92) writes, ‘has not resulted in the solidification of differences … but rather in the proliferation of differentiated sovereignty within and across borders.’ This literature on exception is very useful in highlighting the diversity of state practice. As Das and Poole (2004) and Ong (2005) demonstrate, state action takes many forms and sometimes it does not look very much like the state at all. This is a useful corrective to the tendency to describe state power in zero-sum terms where, for example, smuggling or border liberalisation is seen as empowering local commercial and social networks at the expense of state power. Thinking in terms of the exception can show us that state objectives can be achieved in situations where the normal rule of state law is suspended. Miwa Hirono’s discussion of the operation of an Oxfam project in southern China provides a useful illustration of some of these points. On

Conclusions 109 the face of it the presence of an international NGO working closely with a local Christian congregation in a remote borderland district of China would be disconcerting for state authorities. But Hirono demonstrates that state authorities are attempting to use both Oxfam and the local Christian church to incorporate a highly peripheral community more fully into state administrative structures. The position of the local pastor, who is also a member of the official villager’s committee, is particularly interesting. He may not fit readily into the image of the local strongman painted by Das and Poole but he certainly does blur the boundary that is often drawn between the state and civil society. It appears that state objectives of incorporation and promoting local participation in development are not always pursued through normal administrative procedures but are, in some respects, ‘outsourced’ to the international NGOs, local organisations (including churches) and charismatic village leaders. It is this ‘neo-liberal’ context that means that Oxfam are able to operate in China – not just because they are providing funds, and not just because their small project is not much of a threat to the power of the Chinese state but precisely because they can be used by the state to reinforce hierarchical administrative structures. State power is evident here in the form of its NGO exception. Nevertheless, there are also risks involved in applying the concept of state exception to an understanding of Mekong frontiers and borders. First, the notion of exception – and especially ‘neo-liberalism as exception’ – runs the risk of re-introducing a simplified historical narrative of the borderlands. In Ong’s conceptual framework what is exceptional is a new form of neoliberal governance whereby the homogeneous national territory is no longer the key frame of reference: ‘Rather the neoliberal stress on economic borderlessness has induced the creation of multiple political spaces and techniques for differentiating governing within the national terrain’ (Ong 2005: 77). This differentiation is part of what Ong (2005: 78) calls a ‘postdevelopmental strategy’ in which states are no longer primarily concerned with the ‘watertight’ national entity but with differential participation in global flows. This is a sophisticated presentation, but it is essentially a retelling of the familiar story of the move from the relatively closed borders of the modern era to the more fluid and flexible borders of the post-modern era. Moreover, when Ong (2005: 96) notes that modern neo-liberal systems of governance resemble ‘a model of galactic governance that may be traceable back to premodern roots in Southeast Asian trading empires’ we have the familiar link drawn between the territorial flexibility of the post-modern and pre-modern eras. Focusing on the exceptionalism of supposedly neo-liberal ways of managing territory and citizens involves playing down the extent to which states throughout the modern era have also sought to link their territories and citizens with the political dynamics, economic systems and

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natural resources of neighbouring countries. In the Mekong region, modern states have rarely treated the national territory as a watertight container. My second reservation relates to the way in which the ‘exception’ is interpreted in recent discussions of margins, frontiers and borders. One of the aims of the recent scholarship I have discussed here has been to broaden the concept of exception proposed by Agamben to refer to the flexibility of state practices, especially in contexts where the usual manifestations of state power seem to be absent. As I have indicated, this is a useful insight and contributes to an understanding of the state in less unitary terms. However, this conceptual broadening also runs the risk of making the concept of exception meaningless and, perhaps, stripping away some of its critical edge. From my reading Agamben (2005) is referring to a quite specific situation of repression. He is writing about the tendency of governments to generalise the militarised state of siege to deal with more routine opposition and disorder. If the concept is to be linked specifically to the study of borders it would seem to be most appropriate in situations where borders are strictly closed and lines of national demarcation (or frontier districts) are subjected to militarisation and hyper-surveillance. Residents on the upper-Mekong border between Thailand and Laos recall such a period in the late 1970s when a number of traders attempting to smuggle lucrative consumer goods across the river into Laos were shot by Thai border guards, literally reduced to a state of ‘bare life’ where murder is unregulated by law. Disturbing reminders of this period re-emerged in the mid-1990s when a heavily armed river patrol unit was established in the town of Chiang Khong, putting an end (for a period at least) to late-night sorties across the border in pursuit of profit and pleasure. These are the truly exceptional situations when the state suspends its normally pragmatic and flexible mode of dealing with borders and imposes a state of siege. But in Ong’s usage, the state of exception refers to the opposite situation of territorial flexibility and official disregard for national boundaries. In this sense Agemben’s concept is not so much broadened as inverted and its critical force is directed against contemporary anthropology’s favourite spectre: neo-liberalism. In highlighting the plight of some of the victims of territorial flexibility in Asia, Ong has performed a valuable service. But as the various chapters in this volume have shown there is nothing exceptional about the territorial diversity and flexibility of state practice in the Mekong region. What needs to be condemned as truly exceptional is the tendency of some states, and some agencies or officials within states, to restrict the very normal exchanges and flows that occur at the boundaries of all social systems.

Conclusions 111 Bibliography Agamben, G. (1998) Homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. —— (2005) State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Asian Development Bank (2003) Mekong River Countries Vow to Increase Competitiveness, Connectivity, and Sense of Community. Press Release 013/03. Cohen, P. (2001) ‘Buddhism unshackled: the yuan “holy man” tradition and the nation-state in the Tai world’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 32: 227–47. Das, V. and Poole, D. (2004) ‘State and its margins: comparative ethnographies’, in V. Das and D. Poole (eds) Anthropology in the Margins of the State. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research Press. Davis, S. (2006) ‘Premodern flows in postmodern China: globalization and the Sipsongpanna Tais’, in A. Horstmann and R. L. Wadley (eds) Centering the Margin: agency and narrative in Southeast Asian borderlands. New York: Berghahn Books. Horstmann, A. and Wadley, R. L. (2006) ‘Introduction: centering the margin in Southeast Asia’, in A. Horstmann and R. L. Wadley (eds) Centering the Margin: agency and narrative in Southeast Asian borderlands. New York: Berghahn Books. Ohmae, K. (1995) The End of the Nation State: the rise of regional economies. New York: The Free Press. Ong, A. (2006) Neoliberalism as Exception: mutations in citizenship and sovereignty. Durham N.C.: Duke University Press. Scott, J. C. (1998) Seeing like a State: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed, New Haven: Yale University Press. Sturgeon, J. C. (2004) ‘Border practices, boundaries, and the control of resource access: a case from China, Thailand and Burma’, Development and Change 35: 463–84. Tagliacozzo, E. (2005), Secret Trades, Porous Borders: smuggling and states along a Southeast Asian frontier, 1865–1915. New Haven: Yale University Press. Walker, A. (1999) The Legend of the Golden Boat: regulation, trade and traders in the borderlands of Laos, Thailand, Burma and China. Richmond: Curzon Press. —— (2008) ‘Borders in motion on the upper Mekong: Siam and France in the 1890s’, in Y. Goudineau and M. Lorrillard (eds) Nouvelles Recherches sur le Laos. Collection Etudes Thématiques, Paris: École Française d’Extrême-Orient. Wijeyewardene, G. (1991) ‘The frontiers of Thailand’, in C. J. Reynolds (ed.) National Identity and its Defenders: Thailand, 1939–1989, Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books.

Index

Note: The Greater Mekong Sub-region has not been indexed as it appears throughout the text. Agamben, G. 107 Amnesty International 89 Archaimbault, C. 83 Arnstein, S. R. 53 Asian Development Bank 6, 104 Association of South East Asian Nations 88 Aymonier, E. 80, 81, 82 bandits 25–30; see also Qing bandits Baron, S. 18 borders: administration 15, 90; borderlands 78, 80, 81, 83, 101, 103–4; closed borders 2, 103; internal frontier 35, 51; open borders 2, 60, 101; ‘opening up’ 60, 63, 65, 66, 70; trade 67, 70, 90 Boun Oum, Prince 85, 86–7 Bui Dinh 38 Bui Minh Dao 38 Cambodia 67 Cambodian-Thai border 62, 70 Casteleyn, P. 82 Central Highlands frontier 35–46, 51 Chambers, R. 53 Champassak 79, 80–1, 82, 83, 85 Chan, S. 53 Chau Ban Trieu Nguyen 26, 28, 29 China 54, 55; authorities 55–6; see also Qing China Chong Mek–Tho Khet border crossing 90, 91

citizenship 78, 96–7 Collège des Jeunes Thai 21 Collège du Prolètariat 21 College of the Sons of the State 15, 17 community participation 53, 54, 56, 57 community organisation 54, 55, 56, 57 Condominas, G. 38, 79 cooperation 6, 58, 78, 88, 89 Cornwall, A. 53 Dai Nam Thuc Luc Chinh Bien 27, 28 Dalaba 51, 58 Dang Xuan Bang 14 Dang Nghiem Van 38 Davis, S. 102 decrees 35, 37, 39–46; decree 1 (official letter 3169) 39–41; decree 2 (decree 581) 41–4; decree 3 (Circular 981) 44; Circular 25 45–6 demarcation line 101, 102, 103 development 53, 54, 55, 57, 66; funds 55, 57 Diep Dinh Hoa 38 Dinh Dien 36, 45 Doan 12 Dommen, A. 85 Don Khiaw 75, 76, 78, 88, 90 Du Quimo 27 Echinard, A. 26 ethnic minorities 21; assimilation 16–17 Evans, G. 80

Index 113 exception, sites of 106–10 Fall, B. 37 Feng Zicai 25, 27–8, 29, 30 financial flows 2 First Republic of Vietnam 35 Foucault, M. 4 Fourniau, C. 22 formalisation 66–8 French colonial rule 20–2, 83–4, 86, 103 French Indochina 22, 84, 85 gangs see bandits Gay, B. 84 Geneva Agreements (1954) 36 gender 57, 60, 78 Gesick, L. M. 79, 80 globalisation 2, 3, 78, 102, 106 Grabowsky, V. 79, 80, 81, 84 Ha Thuc Giao 16 Harmand, F. J. 80 Held, D. 2 Henderson, W. 36 Hibou, B. 4 Hickey, G. 37 High, H. 87 homo sacer 107 Hummel, A. W. 27 Hung Hoa province 16, 28–9 Huynh Cong Tinh 39–40, 43, 44 intensity of flows 2 internal frontier 35 international non-governmental organisations 51, 58, 109; see also Oxfam immigration see migration Ishii, Y. 84 Japan 85, 86 Jen Yu-wen 25 Kabeer, N. 64 Kampuchea Fish Import Export Company 62, 67, 29 Ke Shaomin 27 Kelly, D. 53 Keyes, C. 86 Khamphoui, P. 61

Kinh 5, 12, 20, 22, 35–8, 40, 44, 45, 106; migration 37; officials 16, 21; settlement 36–8 lam chuong 12 Lam Dong province 35, 39–46 land development programme see Dinh Dien land regime 37, 38–9, 51 land survey committee 45 Lang Son province 17 Laos 61, 84, 85, 88, 89, 91; Lao Issara 85, 86 Le Tan Nam 41–42 Le Thai To, Emperor 17 Leys, C. 5 Liao Zonglin 26 Liu Chan, Emperor 22 local hereditary chiefs see tho ty local officials (tho quan) 16 Ma Doan lineage 12, 17, 18–19, 20, 21 Ma Duanlin 22 mandala 80, 81, 83 Marini, G. F. 18 Marx, K. 5 Mekong River 6, 81 ‘men of prowess’ 38 migration 36, 37, 76, 77, 88, 89, 92; khon song 95 Minh Mang, Emperor 12, 13, 16–17, 18, 19, 20 Ministry of Finance 44 Ministry of Interior 41 Ministry of Land and Land Reforms 40, 41 Ministry of Population 28 Ministry of the Military (Hue) 27 Military governors (tran thu) 13 Mitchell, T. 3–4, 5; ‘ideological effect’ 3, 4 Mo Naiquin 26, 27 mobility 77, 78, 79–80, 88, 89, 91, 96, 106 New Economic Mechanisms policy 61 Ngaosyvathn, M. and P. 87, 88 Ngo Dinh Diem, President 35, 36–7, 40, 41, 46, 51 Nguyen Dang Dai 13–14

114

Index

Nguyen dynasty 25 Nguyen–Qing collaboration 25–30 Nguyen Trai 12 Nguyen Vietnam 5 Nong lineage 12, 17, 18, 20, 21 Non-governmental organisations see international non-governmental organisations Northern Sayaboury–Nan border 61, 62, 63, 64, 68 Ong, A. 108–10 Ong Ich Khiem 28 Oxfam 51–8, 108–9 Pathet Lao 87, 104 Pavie, A. 21–2 Pham Than Duat 16 Phillips, N. 3 Phinith, L. 89 Pholsena, V. 84 Phoumi Nosovan 87, 98 Phu Tong Uy Di Cu Ty Nan 36 Poipet–Aranyapraphet border 62, 66, 67, 68, 69 Pretty, J. N. 53, 57 Qian Shifu 27 Qing bandits 25–30 Qing China 5, 18, 25 Qing–Nguyen collaboration 25–30 Randolph, R. S. 87 Red River Delta 15–16 refugees 36, 71, 81, 84, 88, 89, 90 regulation 66–8, 91, 92, 94–5, 96, 106 Reilly, T. H. 25 Salemnik, O. 37 Sananikone, O. 85 Sarluk 38 Sayaboury–Nan border see Northern Sayaboury–Nan border settlement: kinh 36–8 Shih, V. 25 Siam 81, 83, 84 Simms, P and S. 81, 82, 83, 84, 86 Sino–Burmese border 51 Sino–Vietnamese frontier 13, 15, 17, 19; bandit activity 25–30

smuggling 88–9, 95–6, 105 Spence, J. 25 Stuart-Fox, M. 2, 60, 80 Su Fengwen 29 Tachilek–Mae Sai border 62, 65 Taiping rebellion 25 Thai–Burmese border 62, 65 Thai–Lao border 75, 78–96, 103, 105 Thailand 61, 67, 76, 85, 87, 88, 89, 91 Thakhek–Nakorn Phnom border 65 Thieu Tri, Emperor 15, 16 tho ty 12, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22 Thongchai Winichakul 79, 84 Thouch Seang Tana 62 Todd, B. H. 62 Tongzhi Shilu 29 Touneh Han Dang 46 Toye, H. 84, 86, 87, 90 tran thu 13 Tran Van Phuoc 42 Tsuneishi, T. 66 Tuyen Quang province 28–9 United Nations High Commission for Refugees 88 United States 87, 107 velocity of flows 2 Vi lineage 17, 19, 20, 21 Vi Van Ly 19, 21 Viet Nam Cong Hoa 36 Vietnam: ‘internal frontier’ 5, 35–46 Vietnamese Court (Hue) 25, 29 Vu Trong Binh 27, 28 Walker, A. 60, 80, 88 Wickert, F. 37 women 56–7, 60–71 Wolters, O. W. 2, 38, 79, 80 Wu Guoqiang 27 Wu Lingyun 26 Wu Yazhong 26, 28, 29, 30 Wyatt, D. K. 80 Yunnan province 51 Zhao Erxun 27