Papers (Part 1)

• Endogenous State Formation: Considering the Northern Vietnamese Borderlands Through French Colonial Military Archives Jean Michaud Université Laval

  Military ethnography in the highlands of colonial Tonkin has been conducted along methods and principles that blend context (colonial expectations, military chains of command, centre-periphery divide, marginal peoples), untried methods (colonial attempts at ethnography informed by nascent social sciences), and actors for whom the exercise of ethnography was wholly unfamiliar (military officers facing upland non-Kinh respondents). What was the ethnography of the highlands of Tonkin and what was its purpose? By choice at the time or by consequence today, was it anything else than a pragmatic exercise in population control? The texts stemming from such encounters thus provide narratives that must be read critically; yet, when informed by an anthropological viewpoint, they also constitute a rich data base from which to carve building blocks for a history on the periphery. I propose to assess these ethnographic writings’ validity today against the background of ongoing debates regarding state formation on the margins, integration of minority groups, but also ethnography as text. This paper is a step towards completing a monograph on the modern reading of ethnography in the borderlands of colonial Indochina.

• Inventing “Hill Tribeness”? An Ethno-Historical Analysis of the Representation of Thai Hill Tribes in Interwar and Post-World War Two Ethnography Lukas Christian Husa University of Vienna

  The aim of the present paper is to analyze the (self-)representation of members of the so-called Hill Tribe population in Northern Thailand in the ethnographic literature of the Interwar- and the Post World War Two period but also by members of the Hill Tribe peoples themselves from the 1960s onwards. The focus on ethnographic literature from interwar period and the post-war period is explained by the fact that ethnography began to establish itself as a science during this period. As far as the “ethnic” side is concerned the focus on the time from the 1960s onwards is connected with the establishment of the Crop Substitution Programs, but also with the onset of the local hill tribe tourism and the development of a local handicraft and souvenir industry. In this context the main questions of this paper will be as follows: in how far did these two sides –the insiders’ as well as the outsiders’ – contribute to the mutual construction of the idea of iso-lated ethnic communities? To what extent did the early ethnological reports and the tourism industry shape present day images of these Hill Tribes? For example, by comparing 19th century travel reports and early 20th century ethnological reports it can be assumed that the idea of iso-lated, ahistorical tribal societies in Southeast Asia was an invention of 20th century’s ethnographers and has indirectly influenced 20th and 21st centuries’ touristic images. The main sources used for the present paper will be ethnographic reports and scientific articles from the 1920s and the 1960s as well as interviews with members of local hill tribe communities in Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son. As theoretical frame Herders’ theory of isolated ethnic communities, as well as an adapted version of John Urry’s and Jonas Larsen’s concept of the so-called tourist or in this case better said traveler’s or ethnographer’s gaze, will be used. The idea of the gaze basically describes the outsiders’ perception of the cultures visited, but interviews with members of Hill Tribe communities should make a comparison with the insiders’ perspective possible.

• Revolutionary Alternatives, or Dien Bien Phu After the Battle Christian Lentz University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  ?i?n Biên Ph? is a place often invoked but poorly understood. On 7 May 1955, a year to the day after Vietnam’s great victory over France, a ceremony on its hallowed ground established the Thái-Mèo Autonomous Zone and celebrated national ethnic unity under revolutionary socialism. Yet local critics decried the Zone’s resemblance to the colonial Tai Federation and called for a revolutionary alternative to regional autonomy. Escalating resource claims turned simmering discontent among Hmong, Khmu, and Dao swidden cultivators into a boil. Intensive engagement with revolutionary ideals and participation in anti-colonial struggle had changed the region’s peoples, destabilizing its elevationally-layered social formation.

  Largely unknown to scholars, the countermovement in and around ?i?n Biên spread across the Black River region between 1955 and 1957, even inspiring activities in Laos and China, before being crushed by Vietnamese security forces in 1958. Exploring its history through newly available archival sources and oral histories enriches a geographic concept of territory as an uncertain outcome of grounded struggles. In the wake of the First Indochina War (1946-54), midland and upland peoples joined forces, protested state resource claims, and appealed to a supernatural sovereign to deliver justice, topple an ethnicized hierarchy, and unite kin across borders. Its leaders held high-level positions in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, demonstrating how political movements rose not in spite of but alongside and within the new national state. Moreover, the millenarian movement built on and amplified tensions embedded in postcolonial territory. Its political vision—a highland geobody ruled by a divine king—challenges how we as scholars conceptualize hegemonic spaces of nation-state rule.

• The Death of Père Verbier: Traces, Fragments and the Historical Anthropology of Zomia Oliver Tappe University of Hamburg

  In 1895, the French missionary Jules Verbier was killed during an attack on his post on the Lao-Vietnamese upland frontier. Reconstructing the events that led to this escalation, the actors involved, and its aftermath, allows a tentative assessment of local sociopolitical dynamics and cross-cultural tensions. This endeavour calls for a creative dialogue between historical and anthropological methodologies and epistemologies. Even if it remains difficult to finally clarify the circumstances of Père Verbier’s violent death, a historical anthropology approach that aims to re-assemble and analyse diverse traces and fragments will allow detailed glimpses into past social and political entanglements in remote ‘Zomian’ contexts.
  Such traces and fragments include letters from local colonial administrators and missionaries, written testimonies of indigenous power brokers, and contested assessments by different political actors in the metropole. Unraveling the complex entanglements across political and cultural boundaries contributes to a deeper understanding of Zomia beyond simplified upland-lowland or state-non-state dichotomies. My analytical framework towards a historical anthropology of upland Southeast Asia – exemplified by the tragic story of Père Verbier – aims to open up new perspectives on past sociocultural configurations and local political dynamics.

Papers (Part 2)

• Ethnohistory and History of the Borders: New Insights Through the Readings of Borders Documents (Kongdin) in Northern Laos Vanina Bouté Centre Asie du Sud-Est

  From my previous works (among others Bouté 2011, 2018), this contribution intends to renew our understanding of regional history by showing the limits of a history written from the “centers” of power, and by arguing the need to develop localized, historical and ethnographic researches. To this end, I will reopen questions debated by historians (notably from Tongchai's book, Siam Mapped, 1994) and anthropologists about the notion of borders in the pre-colonial tai kingdoms, as well as about the design and management of these areas of margins for sovereigns.

  Noting the few studies that have seriously examined the relevance of Thongchai's theses for the continental SEA region outside the Siamese context, particularly the few field investigations conducted in other geopolitical situations, I propose to reconsider the regional history based on ethno-historical data concerning one of the mountain regions at the steps of the Lao kingdom of Luang Prabang, In my case study, the possibility of having been able to find, translate and analyze ancient and unpublished documents (books of the borders, Kongdin) owned by a upland minority in Northern Laos, allows me to show the existence of territorial limits from the 18th century, and to go beyond the idea that the relations between center and peripheries would have necessarily been articulated around the fact that the margins would have been either "neglected" or that they would have conversely "fled" the centers of power.

• Quest for the Past, Stakes of the Present: Navigating Across Sources on History Among the Tai Vat (Houaphan, Laos) Pierre Petit Université Libre de Bruxelles

  Since 2009, I have conducted research in Houay Yong, a Tai Vat village encapsulated in a multiethnic highland frontier between Laos and Vietnam. I have eventually completed a book about the dynamics of history, memory, and territorial cults in the village and its close region. The presentation intends to discuss the issues of methodology and epistemology I faced, situated on the ridgeline between memory studies and more classical history research. On the one hand, I was interested in the way the past is conceived, referred to, narrated, embodied, given material forms, and purposefully performed by people and groups having their specific agendas. On the other hand, I engaged with the usual concerns of history, and with the question about what ‘really’ happened, following a more chronological approach that has faded away in many scholarly works fascinated with subjectivities.
  My central concern is the relation between oral narratives and written documents (notably French archives): how can they be used together to produce a better analysis of history, and of historical imagination? These sources shed light on each other, and it was only through their entwinement that a plausible reconstruction of the past could be proposed, going back to the 1870s and – with more difficulties – before. I will try to capture the iterative processes of the research when circulating from oral sources to documents, and back. The discussion should, however, not be limited to these properly narrative sources: landscapes, material culture, rituals, bodily practices and other non-discursive elements have often been underestimated in the relation people have with their past – and with their present as well. The rekindling of historical anthropology could benefit from considering more seriously those dimensions usually left unaddressed in historical research.

• The Voice of the Lord from a Record Player Gábor Vargyas Hungarian Academy of Sciences

  In this paper I shall present and analyse a part of a 21 hour long Bru life history that I have recorded in the late 1980-ies. This detail is relating to the evangelisation of the Bru as seen through the eyes of a man who himself was not a convert though, he was in relation with the key protagonists of the story and was a wittness of the events. The interview sheds light above all on the question as how evangelised and non-evangelised saw the evangelists? What impact their world had on them? How convincing their arguments were for them? What were their ways in promoting evangelisation? How their personality was reflected upon by the Bru? At the same time the interview reflects the icy political and ideological milieu of the 1960s and 1970s the impacts of which were still lingering when the recording was made.

Abstract

Keywords

• Anthropology
• Borderlands
• Ethnicity
• History
• Zomia