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Chinese Revenue Farms and Borders in Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2009

CARL A. TROCKI
CARL A. TROCKI*
Affiliation:
School of Humanities and Human Services, Queensland University of Technology, Carseldine campus, Beams Road, Carseldine QLD 4034, Australia Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the role of Chinese revenue farmers in defining the borders of the various colonial territories and the states of Southeast Asia during the nineteenth century. Their significance has largely been neglected in writing on the formation of state boundaries. Nicholas Tarling notes, ‘Between the late eighteenth and the early twentieth almost all southeast Asia was divided into colonies or protectorates held by the Western powers, and new boundaries were drawn with the object of avoiding conflict among them’ (Tarling, 2001:44). This paper argues that Chinese revenue farmers were of considerable significance in giving substance to the formalistic pronouncements of remote diplomats and statesmen.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 335 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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