Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T06:57:33.794Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Opium and the Karen: A Study of Indebtedness in Northern Thailand

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Paul T. Cohen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This paper examines a system of economic relations in Northern Thailand linking Karen and Hmong communities in the western highlands with traders from the lowlands. I shall describe the salient features of this tripartite system as it existed in the late 1960s and argue that it was essentially a product of opium cultivation and commerce. I also argue that it contributed towards a serious level of indebtedness among Karen and that this indebtedness tended, in turn, to widen wealth differences in Karen communities. Finally, I shall consider some of the economic changes that have led to a breakdown in the system i n recent years.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , March 1984 , pp. 150 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1984

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 My research in Thailand was supported financially by the London/Cornell Project for East and Southeast Asian Studies and sponsored by the National Research Council of Thailand. All place names in the area of study have been changed. I wish to express my appreciation to Douglas Miles, Pete Hinton, and Gar Via Lee of Sydney University and Brian Fegan of Macquarie University for their helpful comments on a draft of this paper. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Gar Yia Lee who generously provided me with information on a White Hmong community as well as information on which 1 have based much of my discussion of recent economic change.

2 Donner, W., The Five Faces of Thailand (London: C. Hurst & Company, 1978), p. 677. 1 assume that these figures are based on readings from lowland meteorological stations. In the highland village of Pa Kia, i n Chiengdao district of Chieng Mai province, the mean rainfall between 1973 and 1978 was 1, 612 mm. The dry season average was 120 mm or 7 per cent of the annual totalGoogle Scholar; Thailand-Australia Highland Agronomy Project, 4th Report (03 1979), p. 3Google Scholar.

3 Walker, A.R., Introduction to Farmers in the Hills: Upland Peoples of North Thailand. Walker, A. R. (Data Papers in Social Anthropology, School of Comparative Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia 1975), pp. 7–9Google Scholar.

4 I have no information on the present size of the Shan population in Northern Thailand.

5 Ramsay, J.A., The Development of a Bureaucratic Polity: The Case of Northern Siam (Ph. D. diss. Cornell University, 1971), p. 157Google Scholar.

6 Moerman, M., “Chiengkham's Trade in the ‘Old Days’” in Change and Persistence in Thai Society, Essays in Honor of Lauriston Sharp, ed. Skinner, G. W. and Kirsch, A.T. (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1975), p. 153Google Scholar.

7 Economic Conditions in Siam, Reports (London: Department of Overseas Trade, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1928)Google Scholar.

8 Dewey, A.G., “Trade and Social Control in Java”, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 92 (1962): 182Google Scholar.

9 Skinner, G. W., Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1957), p. 199Google Scholar.

10 Grandstaff, T.B., “The Hmong, Opium and the Haw: Speculations on the Origin of their Association”, Journal of the Siam Society 67, 2 (07 1979): 75Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., p. 77.

12 Colquhoun, A.R., Amongst the Shans (London: Field & Tuer, 1885), p. 317Google Scholar; Hallet, H. S.Thousand Miles on an Elephant in the Shan States (London: William Btackwood & Sons, 1890), p. 296Google Scholar;Freeman, J.H., An Oriental Land of the Free (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1910), p. 89Google Scholar.

13 McCoy, A. W., The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (N.Y.: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 317Google Scholar.

14 Mote, F.W., “The Rural ‘Haw’(Yunnanese Chinese) of Northern Thailand”, in Southeast Asian Tribes, Minorities, and Nations, ed. Kunstadter, P. (Princeton, N.J., 1967), 2: 487–524Google Scholar.

15 Hill, A.M., “The Yunnanese: Overland Chinese in Northern Thailand”, in Highlanders of Thailand, ed. Bhruksasri, Wanat and McKinnon, J. (Kuala Lumpur, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

16 Kunstadter, P., “The Highland Populations of Northern Thailand”, in Highlanders of Thailand, ed. Bhruksasri, Wanat and McKinnon, J. (Kuala Lumpur, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

17 Ibid.

18 Geddes, W.R., “Opium and the Miao: A Study in Ecological Adjustment”, Oceania 41, 1 (09 1970): p. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Most of the period of field work was spent in Baan Talaad. I visited highland communities to gain a better understanding of the economic history of the town. I made three brief trips to Mae Waang in July and Sept. 1968.

20 If the Karen borrowed cash and repaid in rice, the interest rate was 160 percent to the borrower (in cash terms) and 80 per cent to the lender (in cash terms). If they borrowed rice and repaid in rice the rates of interest were 73 per cent and 150 per cent respectively. It is noteworthy that the interest rates for debts payable in opium went as high as 162 per cent to the lender and 250 per cent to the borrower. The trader could afford to take a lower interest on rice because he could earn a second profit by exchanging rice for opium.

21 The rate of exchange was 100 thang of unhusked rice per/oj of opium and 40 thang of husked rice peryoi. Rice sold on credit fetched double the amount of opium. One lhang equals the volume of rice contained in a 20 litre kerosine tin. A thang of unhusked rice weighs about II kgms. A joi is the standard measure for opium and equals 1.6 kgms.

22 , McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, p. 317Google Scholar.

23 , Geddes, “Opium and the Miao”, p. 8Google Scholar, and Geddes, W.R., Migrants of the Mountains: The Cultural Ecology of the Blue Miao (Hmong Njua) of Thailand (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 28Google Scholar.

24 Miles puts forward a similar argument for the Yao (another opium-producing people who originate in China). See Miles, D., Marriage, Agriculture and Ancestor Worship among the Pulangka Yao (Ph.D. diss. University of Sydney), p. 22Google Scholar.

25 The figures for the Yao, Meto Hmong, and Karen are conversions made by Peter Hinton in his “Non-Growers in the Matrix of Opium Production: The Case of the Karen”( Paper presented to the Conference on Opium Production, Trade, and Use in Highland Southeast Asia, Philadelphia, 1978), p. 13. Figures for the Mae Waang Hmong are based on my conversions of Gar Yia Lee's calculations.

26 Gar Yia Lee (personal communication).

27 For an explanation as to why few Karen grow opium see Hinton, “Non-Growers in the Matrix of Opium Production”.

28 In 1967 and 1968, the harvest price of a jot of opium in the hills was 1, 200 baht. At the exchange rate of 100 thang of unhusked rice perjoi, Hmong were buying rice at i 2 baht per thang. If the Hmong took rice on credit they, of course, paid a much higher price. In 1968, 20 baht - 1 dollar U.S.

29 , Geddes, Migrants of the Mountains, p. 146Google Scholar.

30 However, Hmong are not equally capable of hiring Karen labour. In the Hmong village in Mae Waang studied by Gar Yia Lee, only 17 out of 30 households employed Karen workers in 1977. These households were larger and wealthier than the households that did not hire (personal communication with Gar Yia Lee). For a discussion of wealth differences among the Hmong of Meto see , Geddes, Migrants of the Mountains, pp. 190–94Google Scholar.

31 This information was taken from the trader's account books.

32 The absence of many householders during my brief visits prevented a survey of all households.

33 , Geddes, Migrants of the Mountains, p. 185Google Scholar. This figure is for an average household of 8 persons after rice needs have been met. The average income per person was 2, 061 baht. The Hmong village in Mae Waang studied by Gar Via Lee had, in 1976, an average income per head of 1, 311 baht after the purchase of rice (including incomes from coffee and livestock). The lower figure for the Hmong of Mae Waang can possibly be explained by the fact that the 1976 price was about double that of 1967 whereas the 1976 price of opium represents an increase of only one third on the 1967 price.

34 Chapman, E.C., “An Appraisal of Recent Agricultural Changes in the Northern Valleys of Thailand” (Paper prepared for a meeting of the 6th academic conference of the Agricultural Economics Society, Kasctsart University, Bangkok, 1967), Table 3Google Scholar. The Northern Thai average (about 600 baht per person) indicates a significantly lower level of cash income than for the Hmong even though Chapman's figures are based on gross cash income.

35 I rai =0.16 hectare.

36 Hinton, P., “The Pwo Karen of Northern Thailand: A Preliminary Report” (Chieng Mai, Hill Tribe Research Centre, 1969), p. 62Google Scholar.

37 Hamilton, J.W., Ban Hong: Social Structure and Economy of a Pwo Karen Village in Northern Thailand (Michigan: University Microfilms, 1965), p. 185Google Scholar.

38 In 1967, these households earned an average of 18 thang (with a cash value of approximately 180 baht).

39 Kunstadter, P., “Fertility, Mortality and Migration of Hill and Valley Populations in Northwestern Thailand” (Carolina Population Center, Monograph 9, 1971), p. 4Google Scholar.

40 Ibid., p. 6.

41 Ibid., p. 8.

42 Hinton, P., Karen Subsistence: The Limits of a Swidden Economy in Northern Thailand (Ph.D. diss., University of Sydney, 1975), p 243Google Scholar. lijima, S., Socio-Cuhural Change among the Shifting Cultivators through the Introduction of Wet-Rice: A Case Study of the Karens of Northern Thailand (Memoirs of the College of Agricuhure, Kyoto University, No. 97, 1970), p. 25Google Scholar.

43 Kunstadter, P., “Subsistence Agricultural Economies of Lua' and Karen Hill Farmers of Mae Sariang District, Northwestern Thailand”, in Farmers in the Forest: Economic Development and Marginal Agriculture in Northern Thailand, ed. Kunstadter, P., Chapman, E.C., & Sabhasri, Sangha (Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1978), p. 122Google Scholar.

44 Ibid., pp. 124, 125.

45 Ibid., p. 123.

46 Marlowe, D., “Upland-Lowland Relationships: The Case of the Skaw Karen of Central Upland Western Chiengmai”, in Tribesmen and Peasants in Northern Thailand, ed. Hinton, P. (Chieng Mai, 1969), p. 63Google Scholar.

47 , Geddes, Migrants of the Mountains, p. 146Google Scholar.

48 , Hinton, Karen Subsistence, p. 256Google Scholar.

49 Wangprasert, Sanit, “How to Approach the Meo in Mae Sa River Catchment, Mae Rim District, Chieng Mai Province” (A Terminal Report to the Mae Sa Integrated Watershed and Forest Land Use Project, Tribal Research Centre, Chieng Mai, 1975), p. 14Google Scholar.