Introduction: Asian Frontiers
Frontiers are the borderlands between two, or perhaps more, different and geographically separate groups. The people on either side of the frontier exploit the environment in different ways, possess different cultures, and wield power asymmetrically. The encounter between two (or more) different economies and cultures, in the process often creates, new social relations unique to the frontier or borderland. The co-operative and antagonistic relations emanating from this encounter are fascinating, sometimes alarming, and therefore offer exciting topics of study. The eight cases here show broad application of the frontier concept throughout Asia.
By FREEK COLOMBIJN & REED L. WADLEY
Ecosystems on either side of the frontier also differ, either naturally or from human-made changes. The classical example is the frontier between sedentary agriculturalists and nomadic pastoralists, here exemplified by two studies from East and South Asia. On the Chinese-Mongolian frontier, the Han Chinese slowly but surely encroached upon nomadic territories throughout the rule of the Manchu dynasty, but Edward Vermeer warns against a simplistic picture of dyadic relations between Mongol nomad and Chinese farmer. The Manchu government and its alternatively restrictive or expansionist policies formed a third element. In the semi-arid area of Multan (now in Pakistan), most groups combined pastoral and agricultural ways of living. Large-scale irrigation projects, instigated by the British colonial government at the beginning of the twentieth century, shifted the agrarian frontier at the expense of pastoral lands. Notably, Karin de Vries argues, this process may have gone hand in hand with religious changes introduced by Islamic saints.
Because the agricultural-pastoral frontier is relatively well known, we have deliberately sought other cases in Southeast Asia, an area too humid for steppes and large-scale pastoralism. The archetypal frontier of Southeast Asia lies between lowland wet-rice cultivators and upland shifting cultivators, with the major political centres lying in the wet rice plains, both now and in the past.
Yet, the focus on different adaptations to the natural environment is incomplete without considering the great influence of the state in producing frontiers, as can be seen Chinese-Mongolian case (see also: Scott 1999). Pre-colonial states defined upland forests as wilderness and forest people as savages living beyond the bounds of state civilization, as Hjorleifur Jonsson explains for Thailand. Upland peoples had long maintained relations with the state through tribute and trade, but during the twentieth century, the state incorporated upland forests and the (by then) economically marginalized hill people.
Raymond Bryant argues that nation-building, which includes creating the notion of an imagined community living within certain political borders, is intimately linked to desires to exploit the natural environment. By creating frontiers, states define their national identity, meanwhile gaining control over natural resources. Continuing Karen attempts to carve out an imagined community on the Thai-Burmese frontier has been a threat to the political integrity, national identity, and resource base of Myanmar. In the Philippines and (according to Catherine Aubertin) in the Lao People's Democratic Republic, the state tries to assert control over frontier areas by claiming to protect biodiversity 'hotspots'. Local communities, on the other hand, define these areas as their ancestral lands.
Oona Paredes takes up the latter point in more detail, when she describes the Higaunon ethnic group, living in the mountains of Mindanao in the Philippines. The Higaunon are under pressure to adapt to the world of the majority lowlanders. At the same time, in response to lowland prejudice, the Higaunon assert their moral superiority, particularly when it comes to struggles over the natural environment. Lowland prejudice against the people in the mountains is also rampant in the Lao PDR. Aubertin demonstrates how a crude distinction of lowland, civilized, wet-rice cultivators versus backward, upland, slash-and-burn cultivation allegedly destroying forest reserves serves to legitimate state policies. As an exception to the rule, in Sumatra, Indonesia, the people living at the interior side of the frontier predominate over the lowland people. Freek Colombijn shows that roads have replaced rivers as the major transport routes, opening a new frontier and making obsolete the distinction between lowland and highland. This is also one of the many examples where immigrants expand into the land of another group, producing a moving frontier.
Leaving the lowland-upland divide behind us, Chris Ballard describes how the political border separating the western and eastern half of New Guinea existed only on paper for many years, but has slowly assumed a more tangible form. The overwhelming importance of West Papua to Indonesians remains as the easternmost anchor to the national 'logo-map'. The Papuan people living on either side of the border have played educational, economic, and legal differences with Indonesia to their advantage, as struggles continue over the meaning and very existence of the border.
States and populations associated with states are not the only agents in the creation of frontiers. Over the millennia of human existence, the contact, conflict, and intermingling of different peoples well beyond state spheres has formed frontiers. Reed Wadley shows, in a case of pre-colonial Iban population expansion in West Borneo, that hostile relations along inter-ethnic frontiers transformed into co-operative alliances out of necessity. Frontier dwellers warned each other against headhunting raids, and frontier longhouses became neutral locations where the wounded could be treated.
The contributions to this volume address the critical relevance of the frontier to many of today's concerns throughout Asia. They demonstrate the paradoxical nature of the frontier throughout Asia the powerful role of the state in frontier creation and expansion, the conflict and tension inherent in frontier relations, and the emergence of new social forms through the co-operative melding of frontier peoples.
Reference
Scott, James 'The State and People Who Move Around: How the Valleys Make the Hills in Southeast Asia', IIAS Newsletter, No. 19 (1999), pp. 3, 45.