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Boundary Concepts and Practices in Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Robert L. Solomon
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Extract

Territory is important to people; the manner in which it is divided up is often critical. The European approach to territorial problems developed mainly in response to European historical experience; the traditional literature in the fields of geography and history makes scant reference to non-Western boundary concepts and practices. European and Southeast Asian approaches to territorial issues differ significantly. In the aggregate, the differences are imposing, if somewhat abstract; in detail, the continuing disparities in outlook and administrative practice are of considerable relevance to current policy decisions.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , October 1970 , pp. 1 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1970

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References

1 Moodie, A. E., Geography Behind Politics (London 1961), 73Google Scholar.

2 Ibid., 81. (Moodie is a geographer.)

3 Oppenheim, L., in Lauterpacht, H., ed., International Law, 8th edn. (New York 1955). 451Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., 452.

5 E. R. Leach, “The Frontiers of Burma,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, in (October 1960), 49. (Leach is an anthropologist. This view is not his own, but his interpretation of “European myth.”)

6 For a discussion of the relations between lowlands and upland peoples, see below, p. 9.

7 For a stimulating interpretation and further references, see Cotter, M. G., “Toward a Social History of the Vietnamese Southward Movement,” Journal of Southeast Asian History, ix (March 1968), 12–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 For fascinating accounts, see The Dynastic Chronicles, Bangkok Era: The Fourth Reign, translated by C. K. Flood, I and II (Tokyo 1966).

9 Lamb, Alastair, Asian Frontiers (New York 1968), 39Google Scholar.

10 Thus the British historian Harvey could write of a “bedlam of snarling Shan states” that, to the European eye, were “wriggling like worms.”

11 The following entry occurs in The Dynastic Chronicles, 368: “It was contemplated by the King that the Mekong River separated the territory of Siam from those of Cambodia and Vietnam. Now France had been surveying and marking maps of the river area, and France was the only country that was doing this. It seemed unwise for the Siamese not to do the same. The King therefore commanded [a nobleman] to seek out and hire an Englishman who had experience in map-making. [The nobleman] hired a Mr. D. . . . . “

12 Lamb, Asian Frontiers, 55.

13 Cady, J. F., Southeast Asia: Its Historical Development (New York 1964), 380Google Scholar.

14 Hirshfield, Claire, “The Struggle for the Mekong Banks, 1892-1896,” Journal of Southeast Asian History, ix (March 1968), 25–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This account makes extensive use of private papers that have only recently become available. See also Crosthwaite, Charles, The Pacification of Upper Burma (London 1912)Google Scholar.

15 It is often written that the French indulged a “sentimental” desire to “reach the Mekong,” which they originally hoped would provide them with a trade route to China. See Christian, J. L., “Anglo-French Rivalry in Southeast Asia: Its Historical Geography and Diplomatic Climate,” The Geographical Review, xxxi (April 1941), 272–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Hirshfield.

16 Gottman, Jean, La Politique des états et leur géographie (Paris 1952), 139Google Scholar.

17 A term misused by Jacques Ancel, in La Géographie des frontières (Paris 1938).

18 See Fischer, E., “On Boundaries,” World Politics, 1 (January 1949), 196–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Fischer, C. A., “Southeast Asia: The Balkans of the Orient?” Geography, xxvii (November 1962), 355Google Scholar.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid., 366.

22 Lamb, Alastair, Crisis in Kashmir, 1947 to 1966 (London 1966), 51Google Scholar.

23 For a discussion of related problems, see below, p. 22.

24 McAlister, J. T. Jr., “The Possibilities for Diplomacy in Southeast Asia,” World Politics, xix (January 1967), 265Google Scholar.

25 Cotter, 18. See also Malleret, Louis, “La Minorite Cambodgienne de Cochinchine.” Bulletin de la société des études Indochinoises, xxi (1946), 26–33Google Scholar.

26 This is a largely unexplored question of interest equally to the anthropologist and the geographer. For some interesting examples, see S. B. Jones, “Boundary Concepts in the Setting of Place and Time,” Annals, Association of American Geographers, IL (September 1959), 241-55.

27 For a discussion of this influence, see below, pp. 19ff.

28 Areas of greatest ethnic complexity are for the most part concentrated in limited regions; for this reason, standard ethnolinguistic maps may appear somewhat misleading. Peter Kunstadter has written of Southeast Asia as “a series of patchworks of language, race, ethnic identification, religion and distribution of cultural traits . . . the patches on the quilts are larger in the valley-coast-delta plains areas. . . . The patches are smaller in the folds and creases of the more remote or isolated refuge areas of tribal groups,” Southeast Asian Tribes, Minorities and Nations (Princeton 1967), 13.

29 See the seminal article by Edmund Leach, 49-73.

30 Kunstadter, 29.

31 Ibid., 9.

32 Kirk, William, “The Inner Asian Frontiers of India,” Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, xxxi (December 1962), 156Google Scholar.

33 Goblet, Y. M., Political Geography and the World Map (London 1955), 164Google Scholar. This statement applies to cultural, as opposed to military, considerations.

34 Oppenheim, 531.

35 In one classic case, “Lan Chang and Ayutthaya . . . shared a common interest in maintaining the Khorat plateau as a wide border area between their two kingdoms. In wars between the Lao and the Siamese kingdoms, the Khorat plateau, by virtue of its intermediate location, formed a major battleground.” Keyes, C. V., Isan: Regionalism in Northeast Thailand (Ithaca 1967), 7Google Scholar.

36 See Hirshfield and Lamb, Asian Frontiers.

37 Moffat, A. L., Mongkut, The King of Siam (Ithaca 1961), 124Google Scholar.

38 ibid.

39 Lam, Truong Buu, Patterns of Vietnamese Response to Foreign Intervention: 1858-1900, Monograph Series No. 11, Southeast Asia Studies, Yale University (New Haven 1967), 90–91Google Scholar, citing Memorials on Reforms (1866-1868) by Nguyen Troung To.

40 Murphy, C. V. J., “Thailand's Fight to the Finish,” Fortune, LXXII (October 1965), 122–27Google Scholar.

41 For example, Leach states that Nanchao “should not be thought of as a state with borders but as a capital city with a wide and variable sphere of influence. The inhabitants of Nanchao had no specific identification with the state, there was no Nan-chao nation which would be dispersed by the elimination of Nanchao as a separate entity.” Leach, 56.

42 Kautilya, Arthashastra, translated by R. Shamasastry, 8th ed. (Mysore 1951), 54. The Arthashastra of Kautilya, which dates from ca. 321-296 B.C., is an Indian classic of great vitality, written 2000 years before Machiavelli's The Prince, with which it is often compared.

43 Ibid., 268.

44 Ibid., 335.

45 Leach, Comparative Studies, 50.

46 H. Benda, in the Preface to Truong Buu Lam, iv.

47 Truong Buu Lam, 31.

48 These terms are self-explanatory except for “incursion” and “excursion,” which signify some form of aggression by one side or the other, short of mutual hostility or open war. Thus, for country A, excursion might stand for verbal abuse in an international forum, a propaganda campaign in the domestic press, or exfiltration of irregular or conventional military units; from the point of view of country B, the policies of country A would be regarded as incursions.