Abstract
This article will address the following questions: “How have people in East and Southeast Asia taken advantage of borders in ways that are not intended or anticipated by their creators? Why have they been able to do so?” Specifically, this article will introduce and analyze three types of borders that non-state actors and subservient states used to their advantage in the 19th and 20th centuries—borders without enforcement, asymmetrically enforced borders, and symmetrically enforced borders. It will show that weaker states and non-state actors used a variety of tools not only to avoid subjugation by threatening overlords, but also to maintain and advance their own sovereignty—and they used these tools to great success. This analysis will hopefully inspire readers and future historians to understand modern Asian borderlands, and their subversive and anti-imperial usage, in a framework that draws from the region’s immense diversity.
Keywords:
national borders, anti-imperialism, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Zomia
Haus Lilienfeld 