Introduction

Through his description of Zomia, James Scott sheds light on some elements of the historical relationship between the state and peripheral ethnic groups, among others. He sometimes compares this to a biological symbiotic relationship. It may be better to characterize this as a relation of interdependence based on a conceptual separation of widely defined ensembles that, although unequal, allows cohabitation and the relative definition of identities alongside the sharing of territory based on cultural factors. This enables us, as demonstrated by several authors (Brun & Miroschedji, Ivanoff and Winichakul), to think beyond the assumptions that nomadic and sedentary peoples represent two independent and opposed poles. This also allows us to deconstruct the idea that both ‘types’ are constitutive of two different evolutionary social stages (the Morganian fantasy of the nation-state).

Scott writes about Zomia as a transnational and extra-state region inhabited by populations who, according to his analysis, emerged through the refusal of or flight from authority. It is a geographical zone, once difficult to access, within which identities could be created and perpetuated outside the state. This description is acceptable to the mandala system that characterizes pre-national Southeast Asia, before the advent of nation-states built by colonization and developed through free trade or communist models.

This system implies a conception of territory that does not match that of the present‑day nation-states. Indeed, territory was not conceived of as a delimitated and mapped geographical entity, but rather as variably and contextually sized spaces (according to such events as seasons, war or production) centred on kingdom-cities (mueang for the Thai populations and main for the Burmese), where control over men and resources, especially wet rice (the mountainous, forest and swamp areas were not part of this system, connected only through tributary dynamics) were more pertinent than the definition of an immutable territorial and cultural unit.

In this system, multi-vassalage was the rule and numerous kingdoms or chiefdoms were subject to the control of other kingdoms. This was not a contradiction and, in many cases, this allowed a greater level of independence for the smaller kingdoms. The regions that were difficult to access and hardly exploitable for padi rice constituted the peripheries of this system, a kind of buffer zone between foe kingdoms.