Introduction
ShanFootnote 1 polities tributary to the Konbaung dynasty (1752–1885) of Burma encompassed both lowland wet rice cultivators and upland swidden agriculturists, and the mode of governance, history, and culture of their peoples overlapped with Tai polities distributed at the margins of China’s Yunnan province, northern Thailand, northern Laos, and western Vietnam. Throughout the colonial period (1886–1948) the British retained Shan polities and their traditional modes of administration as an expedient means of governing ethnically diverse populations in the Shan States of Burma. The British annexation of the Shan polities in 1886 and the subsequent demarcation of the borders with Qing China, Siam,Footnote 2 and French Indochina established borderlines that were inherited by their post-Second World War sovereign successor nation-states. By the 1960s all Shan and Tai polities were incorporated within the borders of Burma, China, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam.
The historical trajectory of Shan/Tai polities ended with their incorporation into Burma, Thailand, and Laos, and the unification of their subjects with the culture and language of the ethnic majorities in these nation-states.Footnote 3 Emphasis on unification, however, has marginalized Shan/Tai polities as research topics. Few studies have approached the 1886 annexation from the perspective of small polities responding to British rule or investigated how they reacted to border demarcation by Britain, France, Qing China, and Siam, the latter a regional power centred in Bangkok. By demonstrating Shan/Tai polities’ ability to manoeuvre through intense imperial rivalry for territory, this article seeks to counter the assumption that only powerful empires played important roles in the formation of colonial states. Despite constraints, some polities managed to consolidate and strengthen their power bases by taking advantage of crisis circumstances. This dynamism enhanced the clout of Shan polity rulers in negotiating with the British.
What were the traditional concepts of sovereignty and territoriality embraced by Shan and Lan Na kingdom polity rulers? Shan/Tai polities or moeng or müang (T. mäng 4) were conceptualized as existing in mandalas (Skt. circle) which had cosmological cores and peripheries, as was common in other parts of pre-modern Southeast Asia.Footnote 4 A mandala could have multiple centres and peripheries, and the periphery of one mandala often overlapped with that of another mandala because they lacked fixed boundaries.Footnote 5 Weak polities at the mandala’s periphery pledged allegiance to powerful polities at its centre, and as vassals substantiated their feudatory relationship by submitting tribute.Footnote 6 These vassal polities were known as subordinate moeng (moeng khün) or satellite moeng (moeng boriwan).Footnote 7 Shan/Tai polities in the Shan States and Yunnan paid tribute to the Burman and Chinese courts, thereby acknowledging them as overlords. For polities in Mainland Southeast Asia, control of manpower was vital, and they engaged in warfare as a means of replenishing deficiencies.Footnote 8 Shan/Tai polities in northern Thailand raided polities in the Shan States and Yunnan, forcibly settling war captives in their own polities to augment manpower shortages during the nineteenth century.Footnote 9 In contrast to the uniform citizenship and horizontal equality that emerged with nation-states, Mainland Southeast Asian polities were hierarchical and ‘obsessed with innumerable particularities of status and privilege determined by one’s distance from the sovereign’.Footnote 10 These characteristics should be borne in mind as background and context to the history of polities described in this article.
Empires ran thinnest at their peripheries, and British administration of the Shan States and Qing China’s governance of Yunnan’s southern border were no exceptions. For expediency, both the British and the Qing governed indirectly through polity rulers on their frontiers. The British followed Konbaung practice by referring to Shan polity rulers as sawbwas, while in Yunnan the Qing called them native officials (tuguan土官/tusi土司). Shan polity rulers retained jurisdiction over their own subjects, but after annexation the British prohibited them from negotiating with outside powers. Before annexation, polity ruler’s vested political interests did not always align with those of a single overlord. Both the Konbaung and Qing dynasties were eager to extend their influence and power in the Sino-Burmese frontier zone and some rulers responded by pledging allegiance to both courts to enhance their own security. For instance, Sipsòng Panna and Moeng Laem on the Yunnan frontier owed fealty and submitted tribute to both the Chinese and Burmese courts for 300 years before the mid-nineteenth century. The Shan described such dual allegiances as ‘China is our father, and Burmah our mother’,Footnote 11 and Volker Grabowsky named them ‘Chinese-Burmese condominiums’.Footnote 12 There were even ‘polities under three overlords (müang samfaifa)’, notably the triple allegiance that Müang Sing in today’s Laos maintained with two polities tributary to Siam (Chiang Mai and Nan) and one polity tributary to Burma (Kengtung).Footnote 13 Overlapping allegiances constituted the norm among Shan and Tai polities but gradually disappeared as the frontiers shrank into fixed borderlines during demarcation by the British, the French, the Qing, and Siam from the 1890s onwards.
Shan/Tai communities belonged to polities, no matter whether large or small. Power relations between polities both intra-mandala and inter-mandala were founded on allegiances. Circumstances sometimes forced polities to shift allegiance for survival. I use the term ‘strategic fluidity’ to describe their manoeuvring tactics. Strategic fluidity was a stratagem employed by rulers, particularly by those at the peripheries of mandalas or on the Sino-Burmese frontier, to handle threats and demands for allegiance from powerful polities. Crisis situations compelled rulers to switch allegiance to the most powerful overlord or even to Burmese kings and Chinese emperors. When circumstances changed, rulers could negotiate returning to their original overlord. Rulers behaved with circumspection when choosing the solutions that saved their polities from destruction. Similarly, to strengthen security, some polities on the Sino-Burmese frontier swore allegiance to both China and Burma, as mentioned above. Strategic fluidity therefore constituted a tactic rather than a policy because rulers used it to handle emergency situations.
Recent historical scholarship on Yunnan’s southern frontier with the Shan States is turning from state-centred interpretations to recognizing the role of borderland people in local governance. Apart from polity rulers, the Qing court also relied on a diverse array of people on the spot such as gentry, merchants, and military entrepreneurs to govern the Yunnan’s southern borderlands.Footnote 14 The novelty of this shift lies in highlighting the dynamism of local borderland actors in the making of history, and Diana Duan suggests that it indicates a ‘decentralised approach’.Footnote 15 During the colonial period the British relied on Shan rulers to administer the Shan States borderlands. This article aims to demonstrate the dynamism displayed by these rulers in the establishment of British administration after 1886. By doing so, it counters the assumption that British rule in the Shan States was achieved through imperial olive branch and carrot-and-stick policies alone.Footnote 16 The dynamic roles of ethnic groups in Burma’s borderlands today, particularly those adjoining China and Thailand, are an extension of trends dating back to the Konbaung and British periods.
To elucidate Shan rulers’ transition from the Burman to the British Crown requires us first to clarify how they adapted their polities, their practices, and their procedures to conform with the demands of new overlords. Rulers’ reactions to initial encounters impacted the size and standing of their polities under British administration.Footnote 17 Therefore, their responses must be understood in the local context, starting from the pre-annexation period, through their interactions with the Burmese court as well as British administrators.
This article investigates how the Kengtung (Chiang Tung) polity (see Figure 1) manoeuvred its change of allegiance from the Konbaung king to the British monarchy at the time of the annexation. Kengtung lay in the Upper Mekong River region where Chinese and Burmese frontiers crosscut, and polities pledged allegiance to multiple overlords. Exclusion from Anglo-Chinese, Anglo-French, and Anglo-Siamese border negotiations forced Kengtung to readjust its territory to fit the new borders delineated by diplomacy between imperial powers. Kengtung and its vassal polities seized the opportunity to enhance their own regimes in the context of widespread dissatisfaction with post-1860s Burman court policy. Before the arrival of the British, Kengtung mobilized manpower displaced by warfare in the Shan States to strengthen its polity. Mainland Southeast Asia had low population densities: for instance, in 1800 densities only amounted to 10–20 per cent of those in India, China, or Japan.Footnote 18 Rulers needed manpower to stabilize their tax bases. Kengtung absorbed approximately 10,000 Shan refugees fleeing civil war west of the Salween River in 1889,Footnote 19 and the ruler attempted to consolidate his polity by assigning them to settle abandoned land. Vassal polities also utilized strategic fluidity to handle British, French, and Siamese interference, and the case of Kengtung demonstrates that they acted in their own interests, rather than those of their overlords.
Map of Kengtung and Lanna polities. Source: Drawn by Laurie Whiddon.
To elucidate these issues, I begin by examining how vassal polities manoeuvred their way through the disputes by Britain, France, and Siam over territory in border demarcations, then probe the dynamism of Kengtung’s expansion into Siam-controlled Lan Na territory and its implications for the history of Chiang Saen. Finally, I situate Kengtung’s dynamism in the context of the civil war in the Shan States.
Disputes with Siam over the Trans-Salween Shan polities
Shan and Karen polities with capital cities on the Salween River’s west bank also possessed territory on its east bank. Invoking the principle of the Right of Conquest under international law, as successors to the Burman monarchy, the British asserted sovereignty over these east bank territories because their rulers had paid tribute to Burma. These Trans-Salween polities bordered on the Lan Na kingdom, the largest and most powerful polity in northern Thailand from the late thirteenth century until the Burmese conquest in the mid-sixteenth century. The occupation of Lan Na lasted until the Siamese and their Lan Na allies evicted the Burmese from their last stronghold at Chiang Saen in 1804.Footnote 20 Anti-Burmese ‘wars of liberation’ during the last third of the eighteenth century resulted in Lan Na splitting into five separate Yuan polities—Chiang Mai, Lamphun, Lampang, Nan, and Phrae—each of which acquiesced to Siamese overlordship to secure its independence from Burma.Footnote 21 Although Lan Na ceased to exist as a unified kingdom from the eighteenth century, the notion of it as a cultural zone persisted, as evidenced by the phrase ‘the fifty seven moeng of Lan Na’.Footnote 22 At the time of the 1886 annexation, the Siamese government laid claim to a tract of mountainous land on the Salween’s east bank that ran 20 to 30 miles wide and 150 miles long, from Kengtung territory in the north to Kantarawady in the south. Siam’s claim was founded on the assertion that east bank territory fell under the jurisdiction of its tributary state, Chiang Mai. This dispute arose because both Britain and Siam wanted to acquire rights to the large reserves of commercially valuable teak forests on this land.
When the Anglo-Siamese Boundary Commission investigated the boundary line of the disputed east bank territory in 1889 they found that Shan and Karen had settled and worked the teak forests before circa 1886. After annexation, warfare erupted between two Trans-Salween Shan polities, Mäng4 Pan1 (Moeng Pan)Footnote 23 and Mòk Mai (Mokmai) (see Figure 1). The Siamese seized the opportunity to occupy the four vassal polities of Mäng4 Pan1 on the east bank from November 1886 to September 1888 because at the time the British had not commenced administering the Salween River area.Footnote 24 The four vassal polities of Mäng4 Ton1 (Moeng Tung), Mäng4 Haang2 (Moeng Hang), Mäng4 Kyӧt (Moeng Kywat), and Mäng4 Thaa4 (Moeng Tha) accepted Siamese protection because they faced imminent invasion from Mòk Mai.Footnote 25 According to Assistant Superintendent James George Scott, the Siamese had ‘entertained designs on this tract along the Salween from the borders of Kengtung southwards’Footnote 26 ever since Siam’s unsuccessful attack on Kengtung in 1854.Footnote 27
Siam forced the headmen of the four vassal polities to swear allegiance to Bangkok, but Mäng4 Saat2 (Moeng Sat), the fifth vassal polity of Mäng4 Pan1, refused and came under the protection of Kengtung.Footnote 28 British intelligence reported Siam’s connection with the ravaging of Mäng4 Pan1 by the Shan bandit Twet Nga Lu in March 1888, noting that he had received assistance not only from Mäng4 Ton1 and Mäng4 Haang2, but also from Moeng Fang,Footnote 29 which Scott described as ‘indubitably Siamese’.Footnote 30 In December 1888 rumours of Mäng4 Mai (Moeng Mai) pledging allegiance to the Siamese commissioner at Chiang Mai sprang up and spread.Footnote 31 In January 1889 the British received word that Siamese forces were already in Mèhöngson, and that Tai Yuan levies from Mèhöngson under the command of a Siamese prince of the blood and son of the Siamese commissioner had overrun the Trans-Salween Pilu district in Karenni territory.Footnote 32
Siam deployed Mèhöngson Shan to Trans-Salween Karenni in June, increased their numbers by early July 1889, and compelled Karenni people crossing from the west bank to ‘drink the water of allegiance to Siam’.Footnote 33 Mèhöngson Shans tattooed 180 people in the district of Mòk Mai and Mèsakon on the left forearm, in red and black, with the symbol of an elephant and a running number.Footnote 34 The Siamese had in effect annexed the Trans-Salween portion of Karenni, established ten stockades each garrisoned with 50 to 100 men (half Tai Yuan and half Mèhöngson Shans),Footnote 35 ‘seized all elephants and felled timber’, and prevented west bank people from crossing to work the teak forests.Footnote 36 The Anglo-Siamese Commission visited the disputed areas in 1889, evicted the Siamese troops stationed at Meksakun and Mäng4 Maw2 (Moeng Mao), and forced the Siam government to acknowledge British suzerainty over the four vassal polities. The Siamese withdrew their troops from the Trans-Salween portion of Karenni after diplomatic pressure from the British.
British accounts portray border demarcation as a negotiation between Britain and Siam. They seldom divulge how vassal polities subordinate to Mäng4 Pan1 understood border fixing. To probe their response, I examine two letters written in Shan script intercepted by the British. These letters, from the headman of Mäng4 Ton1 to his overlord, the ruler of Mäng4 Pan1, reveal the response of the four vassal polities. These letters and other Shan documents cited below are exceptionally rare. Therefore, I must make a short digression to elucidate their value as historical sources.
Polity rulers wrote administrative documents in Shan script from the late fourteenth century onwards.Footnote 37 To facilitate communication with the Burmese and Chinese courts, rulers staffed their bureaucracies with translators and amanuensis to handle official correspondence in Shan, Burmese, and Chinese. British colonial officers frequently ordered rulers and their bureaucrats to submit written accounts of trade routes, villages, histories of disputed areas, and even maps for their own exclusive use.Footnote 38 The seizure of letters addressed to another local ruler cited below provided the British with valuable intelligence.
In the first letter, written in about January 1889,Footnote 39 the Mäng4 Ton1 headmanFootnote 40 informed his overlord that Moeng Fang’s ruler had issued written instructions summoning the four vassal polity’s headmen to assemble at his capital after Siamese and Khun Yuan (Yon) officials (Khun1 Thai4 Khun1 Yon4) had arrived with 3,000–4,000 troops. He explained his rationale for switching allegiance to Siam in this letter:Footnote 41
We went to see them [Siamese and Khun Yuan officials] as a group, and they brought out and read aloud ordersFootnote 42 from the King of Müang Bangkok and from the King of Chiang Mai, that notified us that all west of the Salween River, whether crooked or straight, flowing as far west as Sop2 Sem, has been given away [to the British], and that all [polities] east of that river have been completely incorporatedFootnote 43 within Moeng Chiang Mai as vassal states.Footnote 44 Under the present circumstances, because our villages (waan4) and townships (moeng) are tiny we shall obey the orders and the authority of the Khun Yon and Siamese rulersFootnote 45 of the east. In the future we may again become subjects of your lordship.
According to Scott, the four headmen proceeded to Chiang Mai after drinking ‘the thissa-ye (the water of allegiance)’ at Moeng Fang.Footnote 46 The headmen realized that they now owed fidelity to Siam but failed to comprehend that by fixing the border they could no longer shift allegiance for their own self-interest.
The Mäng4 Ton1 headman wrote another letter later in February 1889Footnote 47 asking the Mäng4 Pan1 ruler to withdraw his men from his territory and refrain from entering his capital city because Chiang Mai and Siamese officials were spying and gathering intelligence, and their presence could bring disaster. In this letter the headman titled himself caw3 phyaa (chaophyaa), confirming his appointment to authority by Chiang Mai and Siamese officials who decreed:Footnote 48 ‘You four polities (moeng) should not be subject to Mäng4 Pan1’. These officials issued warnings: ‘[Though] Mäng4 Pan1 and the British have made you swear allegianceFootnote 49 [to them] and have taken over the territory, we [Chiang Mai and Siam] will take back these four vassal polities, and if Mäng4 Pan1 brings troops we will hinder and hamper them’. The headman elucidated:Footnote 50
Whether we like it or not, we all have had to revert to being subjects of Chiang Mai as before to survive. There would be no villages, polities (moeng), or any people left at all, if three or four polities resisted with military force. Therefore, it is not true to say that we have become subjects of Chiang MaiFootnote 51 of our own volition. It is not true that we have become subjects of Chiang Mai because we frivolously hate the ruler of Mäng4 Pan1 and do not desire to be his subjects … In the future when the Superintendents of the East and the WestFootnote 52 have consulted about the territory and reached an unequivocal, final decision, it will not matter at all to us subjectsFootnote 53 what [people] think, we will kneel down and abide. But now is not the time for us subjects to voice an opinion. Once a decision has been made, no matter to which side we are allocated, we shall not refuse to comply. The ruler of Mäng4 Pan1 should not speak of ousting us because we have returned to being subjects of Chiang Mai. If you still claim that this area constitutes your own villages and townshipsFootnote 54 and use force to contest, not only will we feel unhappy, but we will collectively flee.
The headmen switched allegiance out of fear of invasion, not out of dissatisfaction with their former overlord. They could do nothing but abide by the final decision of the British and Siamese overlords. Therefore, the letter-writer entreated the Mäng4 Pan1 ruler not to bear a grudge but to leave the door open for them to swear fidelity to him again in the future. Maintaining fluidity in feudatory arrangements was a strategy for survival.
These two letters reveal Shan rulers’ limited understanding of the ramifications of border demarcation in contested territory. They did not realize that fixed boundaries deprived them of the opportunity to switch allegiance at will, nor did they consider Siamese territorial aggrandisement within the broader context of British and French power struggles. They remained unaware of Siam’s intention to incorporate its tributary polities into a sovereign nation-state. Their failure to grasp the broader picture resonates with the Shan historian Sai Aung Tun’s argument that Shan rulers did not comprehend why their traditional lands became dominated by the British and French.Footnote 55
Kengtung’s expansion into Lan Na
The Declaration by Great Britain and France signed in January 1896 demarcated the upper Mekong River as the natural boundary between their colonial territories.Footnote 56 It marked the end of years of rivalry between Britain, France, and Siam over the sovereignty of two Kengtung vassal polities, Müang Sing (Muang Hsing) and Chiang Lap (Keng Lap) (see Figure 1). Located on the east bank of the Mekong, Chiang Lap was feudatory to Konbaung kings. Its population was comprised entirely of Tai Lü migrants from Chiang Hong (Keng Hong) Sipsòng Panna in Yunnan who had only recently pledged fidelity to Kengtung. In February 1891 Chiang Lap had three villages with 100-odd houses.Footnote 57 The Siamese claimed suzerainty over Shan polities on the Mekong’s east bank, but the French forced Siam to cede all territories east of the Mekong in a treaty signed on 3 October 1893 after dispatching gunboats to the Menam River near Bangkok to threaten them. The transfer of these territories to France on 10 May 1896 meant Kengtung ultimately lost Müang Sing and Chiang Lap.
Earlier in 1893 the Anglo-Siamese Boundary Commission met at Mäng4 Haang2 on the east bank of the Salween to determine the border between British and Siamese territory on the Chiang SaenFootnote 58 plain in today’s northern Thailand. The frontier zone separating Kengtung and Chiang Mai polities overlapped on this plain, and here Kengtung lost territory too. In the negotiations, Superintendent Hildebrand, assisted by H. G. A. Leveson, led the British Commission, and Long Hkam Chat and Long Sarasit represented the Siamese Commission. The joint commission demarcated the border in two places, erecting one boundary pillar in the district of Moeng Ngam near the Mekok River, and another on the Chiang Saen plain near the Mae Sai River. When Britain ceded Kengtung’s territory near the Mae Sai River to Siam, the population stayed, despite dissatisfaction with the change of allegiance.Footnote 59
The demarcation struggle between Britain, France, and Siam intersects with regional and local history. When the British annexed Upper Burma in 1886, the Siamese began to tighten control over the five Yuan polities formerly under Lan Na with the aim of incorporating them into its own fledging nation-state. Shan migrants uprooted by civil war (discussed below) in western and northern polities had been settling in northern Thailand and northern Laos from the 1870s. Shan script documents referred to these migrants as Tai4 Long1 Footnote 60 and I follow this usage in the translations below.Footnote 61
In 1884 Kengtung’s vassal polity Chiang Khaeng shifted its capital from the Mekong’s west bank to Müang Sing on the east bank with the aim of asserting independence by distancing itself from its overlord,Footnote 62 and pledged allegiance to Siam. When the British investigated the boundaries of Shan polities in 1886/1887, Kengtung was grappling with the Chiang Khaeng independence issue, and the British occupation of the latter’s capital at Müang Sing from 1893 to 1896 in effect substantiated Kengtung’s claims to this vassal polity. The Declaration signed in January 1896 granted France sovereignty over Chiang Khaeng, but this diplomatic solution overshadowed an oft unnoticed event of local history—Kengtung’s loss of its Trans-Mekong polities.
Kengtung expanded into Chiang Saen during the latter half of the nineteenth century.Footnote 63 King Kawila (r. 1782–1816) ousted the Burmese from Chiang Mai and expelled the Burmese garrison from Chiang Saen in 1804. Kawila and his successors restored prosperity by repopulating the Chiang Mai area with 50,000 to 70,000 Tai Khün from Kengtung, Tai Lü from Mäng4 Yong (Moeng Yong), and Sipsong Panna captured in raids between 1782 and 1838.Footnote 64 In 1854, Kengtung forces successfully repelled attacks from the Siamese who withdrew due to lack of provisions.Footnote 65 Chiang Saen had already been depopulated for half a century and was unable to provide logistical support for Siamese and northern Thai troops. From this time onwards, subjects of the Chiang Mai king cultivated the southern portion of Chiang Saen while Kengtung subjects opened land in its northern part.Footnote 66 By the 1870s, Kengtung had amassed sufficient manpower to assign people to till land in its vassal polities. Northern Chiang Saen had remained underpopulated and arable land had lain fallow for want of manpower since the 1850s, so Kengtung peopled it with Shan migrants from the 1870s, building villages and vassal polities (moeng). The political situation west of the Salween resulted in Shan migrating to its east. The dispute between Kengtung and Chiang Khaeng combined with in-migration created a complex situation in the Upper Mekong.
Lying at the northernmost tip of Thailand the Chiang Saen plain had functioned as the centre for administering northern Lan Na since 1327. After Chiang Mai recovered Chiang Saen from the Burmese in 1804, it did not actively promote agricultural production on the northern part of this plain nor attempt to repopulate it. A Shan script document prepared for the British described the situation before 1874–1876 (CS 1236/1237): ‘The Yon4 [Chiang Mai] did not have any land or people in Chiang Saen.Footnote 67 It merely functioned as a pass-through road for travelling up and down [country].’Footnote 68 Taking advantage of the situation, the Kengtung ruler shifted manpower to Chiang Saen during the 1870s. He settled Shan from polities on the Yunnan border to cultivate abandoned land on the plain.Footnote 69 In 1877/1878 (CS 1239), the Chiang Khaeng ruler shifted Shan migrants from northern Shan politiesFootnote 70 to build settlements at Müang Sing on the Mekong’s west bank. By 1890 the Shan headman who served as the tax collector had become very influential in Müang Sing society: he collected tax from Shan residents and merchants in the market on behalf of the Chiang Khaeng ruler.Footnote 71 This Shan headman played a prominent role in this vassal polity at the margins of Kengtung territory.
From the latter half of the 1870s, Kengtung stationed troops on the Chiang Saen plain, its frontier with Chiang Mai, to protect its interests. According to the Kengtung State Chronicle, Kengtung subjects migrated to the areaFootnote 72 in around 1878/1879 and built villages, intermixing with Siamese subjects. Kengtung and Siam concluded an agreement in 1879/1880 allowing Kengtung subjects to settle in Chiang Saen and Chiang Rai, and Siamese subjects to migrate as far north as Moeng Laen and Moeng Phayak. Kengtung stationed troops at five places and established granaries at Moeng Laen and Höng3 Lük5 (Rônglük) in 1880/1881, while the Siamese stationed troops at Tachileik and Hnônghvaen as a counter measure. Both sides later withdrew their forces.Footnote 73
A Shan script document dated 1892, written by the Mäng4 CimFootnote 74 headman on behalf of the Kengtung ruler for British officers, described Kengtung’s settlement of the Chiang Saen plain after 1870. Around 1840, 100-odd kilometres of ‘largely uninhabited frontier zone’ existed between Chiang Mai and Kengtung territory,Footnote 75 but according to the 1892 Shan document by circa 1870/1871 the boundary lay at Këw Tap Yaang in northern Chiang Saen (discussed below), and the document’s author even appended a list of 25 Shan villages under the jurisdiction of Höng3 Lük5. Scott, who had visited Höng3 Lük5 in early February 1891, reported the population as mainly west Salween Shans with only a few people from Kengtung.Footnote 76 The headman recounts the history of their settlement in the first 12 lines: Footnote 77
Line 1: In CS 1231 (1869–1870), Ke Yot Kham4. came and built Me3 Kham4.
Line 2: In the same year CS 1231 (1869–1870) Sën Mäng4 Kaang and Sën Kaang Po Kham4 Fan came and built Tachileik (Taa3 Khi3 Lek4).
Line 3 and Line 4: In CS 1231 (1869–1870), Sën Cum. built Tachileik, but after staying for one year, in CS 1232 (1870–1871) he moved and built Höng3 Lük5 [lit. ‘deep stream’].
Line 5: In CS 1232 (1870–1871), Sën Kham Fan came and built Waang Sum Pöy.
Line 6: In CS 1233 (1871–1872), Sën Këw (or Kew) came and built Maan3 Cöng.
Line 7: In CS 1235 (1873–1874), Sën Kham4 of Mäng4 Cän came and built Paang1 Wo4.
Line 8: Sën Kaang left Tachileik, and in CS 1236 (1874–1875) went down and built Sop4 Pün (or Pän).
Line 9: In CS 1236 (1874–1875), Pu Mäng4came and built Më3 Saa Löng.
Line 10: In CS 1238 (1876–1877), [Sën Caay4] came and built Hoy Laay.
Line 11: People subordinate (kha) to Sën Caay4 all went and built Keng4 Tum and Chiang Saen. At that time, there was not even one Lan Na (Yon4) person there. In the time of Caw3 phaa5 Mäng4 Mit3,Footnote 78 his majesty personally
Line 12: ordered the ruler of Mäng4 Lek4 to build Chiang Saen. Following his instructions, the ruler of Mäng4 Lek4 assembled the Tai4 Long1 subjects under his authority and made them build it.
This account reveals three characteristics of Kengtung’s settlement of the Chiang Saen plain.
(1) The ruler dispatched officials (probably noblemen) to build villages and a vassal polity (mäng4). The passage above mentions the appointment of 11 officials with six different titles between 1869–1870 and 1876–1877. They included caw3 mäng 4 (one-person ⑫Footnote 79); Sën Mäng4 Kaang (one-person ②); Sën Kaang (two people ② and ⑧); Sën (five people ③ ④ ⑤ ⑥ ⑦ ⑩); Ke (one-person ①); and Pu Mäng4 (one-person ⑨). Ke is the headman of a village or a group of people. The caw3 mäng 4, Sën Mäng4 Kaang, Sën Kaang, and Sën must have possessed the authority to organize manpower to open waste land for cultivation because of their status as Kengtung officials.
(2) Kengtung officials mobilized Shan migrants as manpower. The above document indicates that they rebuilt Chiang Saen in two stages. In the first stage Sën Caay4 built Keng4 Tum and Chiang Saen with his own labour force in 1876/1877 when ‘there was not even one Yuan (Yon4) person there’. In the second stage, the head of the vassal polity of Mäng4 Lek4 continued constructing Chiang Saen with his own Shan manpower between 1877/1878 to 1880/1881 by order of the Kengtung ruler who originally came from Mäng4 Mit3 west of the Salween River.
(3) The history of villages and towns recorded by the Mäng4 Cim headman corroborates the report by W. J. Archer, acting British vice-consul at Chieng Mai, who visited Kengtung in May and June 1888. The towns constructed by Kengtung during the 1870s still exist today. For instance, Kengtung established Tachileik in 1869/1870 and Maesalong in 1874/1875. Archer reported that Tachileik was the first place on the Chiang Saen plain settled by Kengtung subjects,Footnote 80 verifying the headmen’s account of Shan settlement beginning here.
Siam shifted people to populate the Chiang Saen plain from 1881Footnote 81 as a countermeasure against Kengtung’s settlement of its northern part from 1877 to 1881. Lines 17–20 in the document recorded the ousting of the Shan from Chiang Saen by Lan Na settlers. Arriving sometime between 1874/1875 and 1875/1876Footnote 82 Lan Na settlers erected huts (sum5) at Më3 Khi. After bandits destroyed all their huts in 1876/1877,Footnote 83 the Lan Na settlers returned and expelled the Shan. The Shan left without protest because the Kengtung ruler had not instructed them to stay. Lan Na settlers evicted the Shan from the Buddhist temples at Tachileik in a similar fashion.
Kengtung governed large swathes of the northern Chiang Saen plain during its ten-year occupation. Evidence appears in a compensation case filed by Chinese sojournersFootnote 84 for damages, recorded in Lines 14–16. In 1870/1871,Footnote 85 the Chinese sojourners at Më3 Khi suffered losses when bandits divided this place into two. The ruler of Chiang Rai rejected their claim for compensation on the grounds that he had no prerogative over Më3 Khi. He clearly stated: ‘This place is not within our jurisdiction (aa në2 pe). Our authority extends to Këw Tap Yaang. Places north of Këw Tap Yaang lie within the jurisdiction of Kengtung.’Footnote 86 The Kengtung ruler eventually compensated the Chinese. The important point is that the Chiang Rai ruler recognized the northern Chiang Saen plain as Kengtung territory in 1870/1871. Chiang Rai had been left depopulated in 1804 (alongside Chiang Saen, Phayao, Fang, and several other müang) and was only repopulated in 1843 by settlers shifted from Chiang Mai by order of that polity’s ruler. Chiang Mai also orchestrated the repopulation of Chiang Saen four decades later through the Chiang Rai ruler.Footnote 87 Given this situation, we can conclude that the Chiang Rai ruler’s recognition of Kengtung’s claim to parts of the northern Chiang Saen plain reflected his stance on jurisdiction. This stance differed from that of the Siamese government. If this is the case, then Shan migrants whom Kengtung settled in the Mae Sai area were not ‘illegal settlers’, as claimed by the Siamese.Footnote 88
Grabowsky has advanced a three-phase model of nineteenth-century Lan Na population growth. Phase 2 (circa 1840–1870) during which Kengtung settled north Chiang Saen spanned the last years of Siamese expansion north and lasted until its consolidation of northern settlement areas in Phase 3 (circa 1870–1900). Grabowsky attributes shifting populations north to ‘concerns of external security’ by northern Thai princes and their Siamese overlords as well as land scarcity in the south.Footnote 89 Shan sources confirm that Siam settled Lan Na migrants in Chiang Saen to support its claim for sovereignty over the entire plain. Siam’s success in securing a border at the Mae Sai River has caused historians to overlook the role played by Kengtung’s ‘illegal settlers’ in Chiang Saen’s post-1854 reopening and the construction of villages and towns. Its success has hindered understanding the repopulation of the plain within the broader context of Shan migration east to escape warfare west of the Salween.Footnote 90
Civil war in the Shan States
Kengtung’s ability to recover from depopulation during the first half of the nineteenth century and begin to expand during the 1870s stemmed from its capacity to absorb Shan migrants. Inter-polity warfare uprooted large numbers of Shan from circa 1878, disrupting the economies of polities west of the Salween. The British annexation of all Burman crown territories on 1 January 1886 and the military expeditions dispatched from November 1886 exacerbated unrest. In addition to using military force, the British restored stability by formally recognizing the political authority of each ruler through the issue of sanads (documents stating specific terms of appointment).Footnote 91 Sanads included clauses stipulating that rulers must maintain peace and order, keep trade routes open, and compensate traders and caravans attacked while within their polities.Footnote 92 Civil war had disrupted trade between Burma and Yunnan. Gunnel Cederlöf has shown that British merchants and chambers of commerce had long petitioned the Government of India to promote commerce between India/Burma and Yunnan.Footnote 93 By compelling rulers to aid the recovery of trade with Yunnan, these clauses satisfied the demands of British merchants and interest groups.
Strategies adopted by individual Shan rulers reflected their reactions to the shift from Burman to British suzerainty. Their responses varied according to their political stances in the conflicts that marred the reign of the last Konbaung monarch, King Thibaw (r. 1878–1885). In the Shan States Act of 1888, the British followed Burmese monarchical practice by allowing Shan rulers to control the civil, criminal, and revenue administration of their own polities, albeit subject to restrictions specified in the sanads issued to each ruler.Footnote 94 This legislation resulted in Shan rulers continuing to govern mixed Shan/Tai (Tai Lü, Tai Khün, and Tai Long) and upland ethnic groups in the Shan States, while the British directly administered Burmans in Ministerial Burma.Footnote 95 For the British it was more expedient and cost-effective to govern the Shan States through polity rulers than by direct administration. This mode of governance ended up preserving the social structure of Shan society and traditional modes of social and cultural life.Footnote 96 It proved effective in restoring agricultural production and promoting local trade within a short period of time after annexation.
From the perspective of Shan rulers, the 1886 annexation marked a change of dynasty that required them to shift allegiance from the Burmese court to the British monarchy. This switchover proceeded according to traditional Shan/Tai political custom, rather than modern notions of territoriality. Annexation offered Shan rulers the opportunity to extricate themselves from the chaos caused by political intrigues at the Burman court since 1878, especially those affecting Moeng Nai (discussed below), and British overlordship helped stabilize their war-torn polities. At the first Durbar held at Fort Stedman in the Southern Shan States on 19 March 1890 in his speech to the ‘Sawbwas, Myozas and Notables of the Shan States’, Sir Charles Crosthwaite, chief commissioner of Burma, emphasized the political disruption before the annexation:Footnote 97
It is hardly necessary for me to remind you of the past history of your country. You know too well and your country itself, with its large fertile plains, its wide stretches of fields now unfortunately deserted, the many sites of ruined villages, and marks of former wealth and of numerous populations, testifies to the fact that you have passed through a time of great misery. What the cause of these misfortunes has been you know full well ... I think most of you will admit that it is the misgovernment of Burma added to the want of unity and cohesion among yourselves, to which I have referred, that your misfortunes and your present impoverished condition are mainly due.
Court intrigues initiated by Queen Supayalat, the principal wife of King Thibaw, troubled the Konbaung dynasty from circa 1878 and spawned struggles between the reformists bent on modernization and administrative change and the royalists determined to maintain the old order.Footnote 98 While Crosthwaite’s stress on Burman misgovernance was a blatant sales pitch designed to justify British rule, it was nevertheless true that persistent warfare had devasted the economies of Shan polities.
Dissatisfaction with court policy surfaced after the Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852–1853). Weakened by the confrontation, the Konbaung dynasty faced hostility from the Shan, the Mon, and the Arakan.Footnote 99 Shan rebellions broke out in the north-western polities of Mobye, Mäng4 Mit3-Mong Leng, Moguang, and Myitkyina during the 1860s. Shan rulers had supported King Mindon (r. 1853–1878) in overthrowing the previous king, Pagan Min, but by 1865 they opposed King Mindon’s control of their territories and natural resources. Shan polities too faced internal problems such as succession disputes, the most notable being the one in Moeng Mit3-Moeng Leng circa 1840–1892. The decline in Burma-Yunnan trade soured relations between the upland Kachin allies of Shan rulers and the Burman court, affording Shan rulers an opportunity to hire Kachin mercenaries to fight their rivals, a change that ended up intensifying inter-polity warfare.Footnote 100
Faced with this troubled situation, King Mindon strove to mitigate conflict by cultivating friendly relations with the ruler of Moeng Nai, the largest and most powerful polity in the Southern Shan States. But the aggressive policy of Mindon’s successor, King Thibaw, towards Moeng Nai compelled its ruler Sao Hkun Kyi to rebel in November 1883. Sao Hkun Kyi’s list of grievances included Thibaw’s imprisonment of his queen, tax rises, arbitrary apportionment of his territory to other Shan rulers, and the appointment of his enemies to important administrative positions. As unrest spread, usurpers and de facto rulers took over Shan polities west of the Salween.Footnote 101 Before the arrival of the British, the rulers of Moeng Nai and Kengtung organized other Shan rulers affected by the conflict into a confederacy to dethrone King Thibaw and replace him with the Limbin prince, who was of royal blood. After the fall of Mandalay in November 1885, resistance against the British organized by the Myinzaing prince and the Shan ruler of Hsien Wi failed due to lack of support from prominent northern Shan polities.Footnote 102 According to Shan and Burmese historians, Shan rulers did not resist the British to gain complete independence, but wanted to install Burmese princes as monarchs to preserve Shan autonomy under a nominal Burmese suzerain.Footnote 103 The Shan historian Sai Aung Tun argues that Shan rulers desired to remain under the overlordship of a Burman ‘monarchical system’ which recognized ‘their traditional right to manage their internal affairs without interference either from the royal court or from their military representatives stationed at their capitals’.Footnote 104
The confederacy dissolved after the Limbin prince surrendered in May 1887 bringing temporary peace, but widespread inter-polity fighting erupted as local leaders took advantage of the small number of British troops garrisoned at Fort Stedman. The British did not completely eradicate resistance until 1896, yet they felt confident enough to begin governing Shan polities by 1888. To ensure that rulers administered their own polities ‘properly’, the British divided Shan polities into two divisions—the Northern Shan States and the Southern Shan States—each with its own superintendent in August 1888. Sai Aung Tun concludes that the British introduced this infrastructure of closer supervision to modify ‘the autonomous rights’ of Shan rulers.Footnote 105 This is undoubtedly true of Kengtung because the sanads of 1889 and 1896 both imposed constraints on the ruler. First, in all matters he ‘shall accept and act upon any advice that may be given by the Chief Commissioner of Burma either in respect of the internal affairs of Kyainton [Kengtung] or its relations with other States’. Second, the ruler must ensure law and order, keep open the trade routes to Yunnan, and compensate traders or caravans for losses incurred by attacks within his territory in accordance with rates fixed by the superintendent of the Shan States. Third, if a railway were to be built through Kengtung, the ruler must ‘provide land free of cost’ and ‘help the government as much as possible’.Footnote 106 A document dated 10 February 1890 from the chief commissioner’s under secretary to the superintendent of the Shan States explained two differences between Kengtung’s sanad and those issued to other Cis-Salween polities. First, it omitted the clause ‘the government reserves proprietary right in forests, mines, and minerals’ included in other sanads, because the chief commissioner ‘thinks it unnecessary to impose restrictions of this nature on the Trans-Salween Chiefs’.Footnote 107 However, this clause was inserted in the 1896 sanad.Footnote 108 Second, the Kengtung sanad does not mention its vassal polities so as to discourage the ruler from ‘entering States over which he has no real control, or over which we have no desire at present to assume suzerainty’. The British feared that if mentioned in the sanad, the ruler would assume that they supported his feudatory rights over vassal polities.Footnote 109 Therefore even before the Anglo-French negotiations began in 1894, the British government had not committed to supporting Kengtung’s claims to its vassals Müang Sing and Chiang Lap east of the Mekong River.Footnote 110
Conclusion
The Kengtung polity manoeuvred the ever-mutating political and economic conditions accompanying the transition from Konbaung to British overlordship by settling land in Lan Na territory. The political acumen displayed by the ruler in expanding his polity started as a strategy to benefit from the heightened turmoil of the 1870s and 1880s and was not spawned by the British annexation of 1886. The fluidity of ties of allegiance enabled its Trans-Mekong vassal Chiang Khaeng to initially assert independence, only to be split in half, with left bank territories falling under French suzerainty and right bank territories under British rule.Footnote 111
International border demarcation compelled some Shan polities to switch allegiance multiple times to satisfy the demands of imperial powers. Political realignment reflected the prioritization of self-interest by polities of all sizes. Rulers of Shan polities submitted to the British for survival, while at the same time devising policies to recover from the devastation wrought by the civil war. The practice of switching loyalty in times of adversity ensured their relatively peaceful transition to governance by Siam and France. Restrictions on access to teak forests, mines, and other natural resources stipulated in the sanads, and borders fixed by imperial powers severely constrained Shan rulers’ manoeuvrability, yet some still found the leeway to assert their own self-interests. The decision to govern indirectly through polities forced the British to support rulers’ efforts to stabilize society and promote economic recovery. Fearful of triggering unrest, the British refrained from eliminating large polities, though they changed polity rulers and ‘amalgamated the small states into big states to meet the needs of British administration’.Footnote 112 The need to preserve Shan polities demonstrates British dependence on them for governance and calls into question the validity of the notion of powerful empires single-handedly creating colonial states. Later, the British increasingly intervened in the administration of Shan polities, especially from the 1920s, which stands in sharp contrast with their inability to penetrate the independent and self-governing polities on the India-Burma borderlands, as demonstrated by Willem van Schendel.Footnote 113
Shan polities depended on manpower for stable fiscal bases. Warfare and conflict between Shan rulers and the Burman court displaced populations. The Kengtung ruler mobilized these people to repopulate his polity and vassal polities from circa 1870. The case of Kengtung demonstrates that the demographics of Shan polities fluctuated with political upheavals and warfare, and refutes the notion of feudatory ties permanently binding vassals to one ruler. Vassals switched allegiance according to the circumstances. The mobility of manpower during the 1870s and 1880s shows that Shan polities waxed and waned not just through their encounters with Konbaung and British overlords, but, more importantly, by their ability, or inability, to manage manpower to consolidate their polities. The practice of strategic fluidity tactics and raiding from other polities could lead to the loss of whole villages, resulting in depopulation. One polity’s loss was another polity’s gain, creating opportunities for large polity rulers to attract manpower to their territories.
Acknowledgements
I gratefully thank my colleagues Gunnel Cederlöf, Jianxiong Ma, Anandaroop Sen, and Willem van Schendel in the research project ‘Trans-Himalayan Flows, Governance and Spaces of Encounter’ funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2022-2025 and the two anonymous referees of Modern Asian Studies for valuable comments and suggestions. Some Shan sources cited were collected in an earlier research project ‘Reappraising the History of the Upper Mekong River Region through Documents in Indigenous Scripts; New Avenues for Research Opened Up by Manuscripts Found in French and British Archives’, Grant-in-Aid from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Science and Technology Japanese Association for the Promotion of Science No. 21401015, Principal Investigator Akiko Iijima, April 2009 to March 2012.
Competing interests
The author declares none.
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