Teak & Lead
Making Borders, Resources, and Territory in Colonial Burma
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5145444 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Frances O’morchoe (0000-0001-6326-2137, University of Oxford, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 23-46 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Geopolitics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1465-0045 • E-ISSN: 1557-3028 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14650045.2020.1815711 |
| OpenAlex | W3085876409 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 26 |
Through a comparative historical analysis of two sites on Myanmar’s borders with China and Thailand, this article explores how natural resources affected border-making in Zomia. Firstly, the article argues that demand for natural resources drove lowland states’ territorialisation of the highlands in the late nineteenth century, including their desire to demarcate borders. Secondly, local actors chose different political strategies in response to lowland state penetration. Some chose to attempt to repel lowland states, others to avoid them. The type of natural resources available (‘lootable’ versus ‘unlootable’ resources) enhanced or diminished the effectiveness of the political tactics chosen by local actors. Thirdly, the article explores whether local politics or the ‘knowability’ of natural resources determined the differential success of border-making in the region. This attention to natural resources can deepen histories of ‘state-escaping’ highland peoples. This also has implications for the question of human agency and environmental determinism in Zomia, a question which is often implicit but unaddressed when scholars use the concept of the ‘friction of terrain’. In the context of accelerating climate change and the global spread of pathogens, understanding the potential for agency of non-human objects is more important than ever. Drawing on archival materials from the Myanmar National Archives, India Office Records, and the British Library, this study gives insights into both the politics of this region today, and how natural resources affected border-making at the margins of states
Ancient history · Archaeology · Business · Colonialism · Economics · Economy · Geography · Political science · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Cambodian History and Society · History · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Geology
The Art of Not Being Governed
The Galactic Polity
Human territoriality
Becoming Stateless
Imagining the borderlands
Greed and grievance in civil war
Friction
Margin to mainstream, periphery to center
Territorialisation and marginalisation in the forested landscapes of Orissa, India
Modernization and Centralization in Northern Thailand, 1875–1910
From War Refugees to Immigrants
Producing Intransigence
Scott's “Zomia,” or a Populist Post-modern History of Nowhere
A Diamond Curse
Does Lootable Wealth Breed Disorder
To Go Where No Han Could Go for Long
Mining, history, and the anti-state Wa
The political ecology of war
Terrain as insurgent weapon
Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance
Violence and Ethnicity on a Qing Colonial Frontier
The Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma
The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia
From Max Weber
Territorialization and state power in Thailand
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2024 (2) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |