The Interiorizations of a Perennial Minority Group

Abstract

It is a known fact that many of the “hill tribes” found on the Southeast Asian subcontinent have not always, during their history as ethno-linguistic groups, been living in the mountains. Thousands of years of migrations, predominantly southwards, punctuated by struggles in fertile valleys for power over resources, for labor and water, continually changed the ethno-linguistic situation. Former pre-state (that is, tribal) valley dwellers were often forced into less accessible and often less attractive higher areas. But also the inhabitants of valley chiefdoms, kingdoms, and even empires, which once seemed to have established their power firmly over soil, water, and people, and to have anchored their ancestries firmly in heaven, have made their way up into the mountainous jungles, and often back to a pre-state, non-class-stratified tribal existence. Not only cross-sections of these societies, but also segments, like defeated armies and dispossessed peasants, groups without a chance of economic and cultural integration into expanding and unifying valley kingdoms, either joined existing groups or just became highlanders, more independent of markets, armies, and tax collectors than those they left behind. Some of them were able to re-establish power in the form of chiefdoms or warlordships over, or at least in protection against, neighboring valley peoples or fellow highlanders; those who failed to re-establish power had to accept some kind of dependency on more differentiated and powerful economic, social and political forces in the valleys, or their allies in the mountains.