Modern Asian Studies, 2013 pp. 1-33
Abstract: This research reviews the formation of the Yunnan-Burma frontier since the
1720s, when the Qing government reformed the administrative systems from
chieftainships to official counties in the middle and southern Yunnan mountains
areas. One of some crucial political changes was the policy of salt revenue
which directly stimulated large scale ethnic resistance in the region of salt
wells. However, the social political context of continuing ethnic conflicts was
not only rooted in the reshaping of the salt-consuming districts, but also rooted
in social changes in the Yunnan-Burma borderland because of increasing Han
Chinese immigration and their penetration into mining, long distance trade and
local agriculture. In order to successfully control mountain resources as the base
of revenue, the Qing government continued to gradually integrate native Dai
chieftains into official counties. Local resistance continued and reached a peak
from the 1790s to the 1810s. Pushed by the Qing government, and with the
collaboration of different social actors, the synthesized mobilization of frontier
formation had made ethnic politics a main style of social political reconstruction,
even if commercial exchange, long distance trade, and demographic reshaping
also continued to be mixed with ethnic politics as another layer of the YunnanBurma
frontier formation.