Strategic fluidity: Expansion by Kengtung (Chiang Tung) into Siam-controlled Lan Na, 1869–1892

Abstract This article approaches the 1886 British annexation of the Shan States in Burma from the perspective of small polities responding to British rule and border demarcation by European powers, the Qing empire, and Siam, a regional power centred at Bangkok. It investigates how Shan/Tai polities responded to changing allegiance from the Burman to the British Crown through the case of the Kengtung (Chiang Tung) polity. Britain’s demarcation of borderlines compelled polities originally feudatory to Kengtung to switch allegiance to the Siamese and the French. This response sprang from the traditional Shan/Tai tactic of strategic fluidity rather than actions founded in a clear understanding of the implications of fixed borders. Civil war in the Shan States lying west of the Salween River from the early 1870s uprooted large numbers of Shan people. The Kengtung ruler mobilized them as manpower to consolidate his polity and opened new land in the Mae Sai and Mekok river areas on the Chiang Saen plain, a frontier zone between Kengtung and the Lan Na polity of Chiang Mai. Kengtung’s frontier shrank due to two processes: first, aggression by Siam-controlled Lan Na, and second, by Britain’s choice of border demarcation points in Chiang Saen. By demonstrating the ability of Shan/Tai polities to manoeuvre through intense imperial rivalry for territory this article seeks to counter the assumption that only powerful empires played important roles in the formation of colonial states.