Merchants and Migrants: Ethnicity and Trade Yunnanese Chinese in South East Asia (Southeast Asia Studies Monograph Series) Book

Although the history of Chinese overseas migration to Southeast Asia is widely known, the untold story is the overland movement of Chinese as traders and settlers into the domains of Southeast Asia's mountain chieftains and lowland princes. Known colloquially in Northern Thailand as "haw," the Yunnanese Chinese inherited the legacy of entrepreneurial and mediating roles from early traders. At the same time, their identity in contemporary Thailand has been shaped by cold war politics and, most recently, the forces of globalization in the Southeast Asia region. Ann Maxwell Hill's work on the premodern caravan trade and the Yunnanese Chinese illumines previously unexplored corners of Southeast Asian history and ethnography. Drawing inspiration from E.R. Leach and his successors, Hill demonstrates how ethnic identities change in response to both the process of localization and the larger structures of state, region, and their economies.Read More