History Professor, Duke Kunshan University Ph.D from University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2013 (Southeast Asian and World History Supervisors: Leonard Andaya
... 36. These workers, called ahmu-dan, were in the possession of the king. The status of ahmu-da... more ... 36. These workers, called ahmu-dan, were in the possession of the king. The status of ahmu-dan was in contrast to the athi population, a word sometimes translated as free, but athi lives were highly circumscribed by royal power. ...
Slave-gathering warfare was an endemic feature of Southeast Asian statecraft in the pre-colonial ... more Slave-gathering warfare was an endemic feature of Southeast Asian statecraft in the pre-colonial era. In this lightly populated region, capturing people was more important than seizing new lands. Armies laid siege to rival urban centers and carried thousands of people into captivity, among them artisans, performers , and musicians. This is a well-understood feature of Southeast Asian statecraft, but the histories of captive people have gone largely unstudied. My project is to examine slave-gathering warfare as a vector for cultural exchange. The forced relocation of skilled people laid the groundwork for processes of transculturation and cultural reinvention, but the evidence of these exchanges lays mostly outside the archive in the artistic, musical, and theatrical practices of the captive communities themselves. In this article, I examine a cluster of neighborhoods in Thonburi, one of the oldest areas in metropolitan Bangkok. Descendants of non-Thai war captives and refugees populate this area, most brought to Bang-kok in the late-18th and 19th centuries from Laos, coastal Burma, and the Malay border region. I examine the cultural practices that originated in these communities through the lens of creolization theory, which allows us to better examine and comprehend the cultural contribution of foreign captives to Bangkok's urban culture.
Cahiers des Anneaux de la Memoire / Shackles of Memory, No. 15, 2014
Examines the application of of creolization theory to slavery in Southeast Asia using the case st... more Examines the application of of creolization theory to slavery in Southeast Asia using the case study of Thai war captives in upper Burma.
This dissertation is devoted to slave gathering warfare from the 18th to mid-19th centuries with ... more This dissertation is devoted to slave gathering warfare from the 18th to mid-19th centuries with a focus on the great reshuffling of human populations in mainland Southeast Asia due to the rise of the Konbaung Dynasty. Beginning soon after its founding in 1752, this powerful, expansionary kingdom conquered kingdoms and principalities far afield from its homeland in Upper Burma. Among these conquests were the distant kingdoms of Ayutthaya, sacked in 1767, and Manipur, raided repeatedly until its eventual depopulated between 1819 and 1826. The cumulative effect of these wars with Ayutthaya and Manipur was that many tens of thousands of foreign captives were forcibly relocated to Upper Burma. My research attempts to understand captives taken in mainland Southeast Asia’s campaigns of slave gathering warfare as potent historical actors capable of effecting artistic, cultural and political changes both minor and sweeping in their respective locations of captivity. Interstate slave gathering warfare was an endemic feature of pre-colonial Southeast Asian statecraft. Kingdoms rose and fell throughout Southeast Asia based on their ability to accumulate some portion of their rivals’ populations and to protect the people in the territories under their control from seizure and forced relocation. Numerous studies have been devoted to this subject, but in nearly all of them war captives are understood as something we might call “labor inputs” that are crucial for understanding the vicissitudes of power in the Southeast Asian context. Yet, in most of these studies the “input” of captives remains abstract—large populations equal economic power, ergo the introduction of additional captured people increase the state’s wealth and security. Yet, we know that communities of skilled artisans ranging from dancers and astrologers to metal workers and elephant veterinarians (to name just a few) were often valued objects of slave gathering warfare. Kings and their military generals targeted these artisans precisely because they hoped to utilize the skills and knowledge of these captives. For this reason, we can productively deepen our understanding of cultural development in mainland Southeast Asia by analyzing slave gathering warfare as a crucial vector for intra-regional cultural exchange; and to shift our analysis of captive people and their descendants from reductively simple “labor inputs” to historical agents with the potential for effecting transformative cultural changes in the land of their captivity. This thesis is predominantly focused on captives that were incorporated into the royal service system as skilled artisans, royal advisors, and high-level military personnel. It is among this stratum of captives that the most discernible kinds of cultural exchange took place. This is largely due to the survival of their material culture and/or the vitality of these communities that has sustained into the present day. My research will combine analysis of conventional textual sources with a more unconventional use of “cultural” sources to uncover the complicated history of multilateral cultural exchange that occurred in Upper Burma due to the forced relocation of war captives from Ayutthaya and Manipur.
Who were the agents of cultural change in pre-colonial Southeast Asia? Scholars have identified s... more Who were the agents of cultural change in pre-colonial Southeast Asia? Scholars have identified such diverse characters as Brahmins journeying from South Asia, European sea captains looking down at indigenous Asians from the decks of their sailing ships, local chiefs or monarchs seeking new accoutrements of status, monks on royally-sponsored missions, traders of all descriptions—all historical characters of status or privilege. But what if we see the agent of cultural hybridity as a lowly family of war captives, captured and transported to a new kingdom against its will? What happens when we see them as having the agency to mold something new out of the vestiges of their natal cultures, those of their captors, and those of their neighbors? Bryce Beemer’s dissertation takes theoretical inspiration from creolization theory, usually associated with scholarship on slaves in the Americas, to paint a vibrant and unruly picture of cultural rupture, exchange, and production in what he calls the “creole cities” of premodern Burma, Siam, and Manipur. He focuses especially on two groups of creole communities settled around the royal capitals of Upper Burma. The “Yodaya” were peasants, artisans, and experts taken captive from Ayutthaya (Siam) in 1767, and the “Kathe” were taken in raids against Manipur from the 1750s to the 1830s.
... 36. These workers, called ahmu-dan, were in the possession of the king. The status of ahmu-da... more ... 36. These workers, called ahmu-dan, were in the possession of the king. The status of ahmu-dan was in contrast to the athi population, a word sometimes translated as free, but athi lives were highly circumscribed by royal power. ...
Slave-gathering warfare was an endemic feature of Southeast Asian statecraft in the pre-colonial ... more Slave-gathering warfare was an endemic feature of Southeast Asian statecraft in the pre-colonial era. In this lightly populated region, capturing people was more important than seizing new lands. Armies laid siege to rival urban centers and carried thousands of people into captivity, among them artisans, performers , and musicians. This is a well-understood feature of Southeast Asian statecraft, but the histories of captive people have gone largely unstudied. My project is to examine slave-gathering warfare as a vector for cultural exchange. The forced relocation of skilled people laid the groundwork for processes of transculturation and cultural reinvention, but the evidence of these exchanges lays mostly outside the archive in the artistic, musical, and theatrical practices of the captive communities themselves. In this article, I examine a cluster of neighborhoods in Thonburi, one of the oldest areas in metropolitan Bangkok. Descendants of non-Thai war captives and refugees populate this area, most brought to Bang-kok in the late-18th and 19th centuries from Laos, coastal Burma, and the Malay border region. I examine the cultural practices that originated in these communities through the lens of creolization theory, which allows us to better examine and comprehend the cultural contribution of foreign captives to Bangkok's urban culture.
Cahiers des Anneaux de la Memoire / Shackles of Memory, No. 15, 2014
Examines the application of of creolization theory to slavery in Southeast Asia using the case st... more Examines the application of of creolization theory to slavery in Southeast Asia using the case study of Thai war captives in upper Burma.
This dissertation is devoted to slave gathering warfare from the 18th to mid-19th centuries with ... more This dissertation is devoted to slave gathering warfare from the 18th to mid-19th centuries with a focus on the great reshuffling of human populations in mainland Southeast Asia due to the rise of the Konbaung Dynasty. Beginning soon after its founding in 1752, this powerful, expansionary kingdom conquered kingdoms and principalities far afield from its homeland in Upper Burma. Among these conquests were the distant kingdoms of Ayutthaya, sacked in 1767, and Manipur, raided repeatedly until its eventual depopulated between 1819 and 1826. The cumulative effect of these wars with Ayutthaya and Manipur was that many tens of thousands of foreign captives were forcibly relocated to Upper Burma. My research attempts to understand captives taken in mainland Southeast Asia’s campaigns of slave gathering warfare as potent historical actors capable of effecting artistic, cultural and political changes both minor and sweeping in their respective locations of captivity. Interstate slave gathering warfare was an endemic feature of pre-colonial Southeast Asian statecraft. Kingdoms rose and fell throughout Southeast Asia based on their ability to accumulate some portion of their rivals’ populations and to protect the people in the territories under their control from seizure and forced relocation. Numerous studies have been devoted to this subject, but in nearly all of them war captives are understood as something we might call “labor inputs” that are crucial for understanding the vicissitudes of power in the Southeast Asian context. Yet, in most of these studies the “input” of captives remains abstract—large populations equal economic power, ergo the introduction of additional captured people increase the state’s wealth and security. Yet, we know that communities of skilled artisans ranging from dancers and astrologers to metal workers and elephant veterinarians (to name just a few) were often valued objects of slave gathering warfare. Kings and their military generals targeted these artisans precisely because they hoped to utilize the skills and knowledge of these captives. For this reason, we can productively deepen our understanding of cultural development in mainland Southeast Asia by analyzing slave gathering warfare as a crucial vector for intra-regional cultural exchange; and to shift our analysis of captive people and their descendants from reductively simple “labor inputs” to historical agents with the potential for effecting transformative cultural changes in the land of their captivity. This thesis is predominantly focused on captives that were incorporated into the royal service system as skilled artisans, royal advisors, and high-level military personnel. It is among this stratum of captives that the most discernible kinds of cultural exchange took place. This is largely due to the survival of their material culture and/or the vitality of these communities that has sustained into the present day. My research will combine analysis of conventional textual sources with a more unconventional use of “cultural” sources to uncover the complicated history of multilateral cultural exchange that occurred in Upper Burma due to the forced relocation of war captives from Ayutthaya and Manipur.
Who were the agents of cultural change in pre-colonial Southeast Asia? Scholars have identified s... more Who were the agents of cultural change in pre-colonial Southeast Asia? Scholars have identified such diverse characters as Brahmins journeying from South Asia, European sea captains looking down at indigenous Asians from the decks of their sailing ships, local chiefs or monarchs seeking new accoutrements of status, monks on royally-sponsored missions, traders of all descriptions—all historical characters of status or privilege. But what if we see the agent of cultural hybridity as a lowly family of war captives, captured and transported to a new kingdom against its will? What happens when we see them as having the agency to mold something new out of the vestiges of their natal cultures, those of their captors, and those of their neighbors? Bryce Beemer’s dissertation takes theoretical inspiration from creolization theory, usually associated with scholarship on slaves in the Americas, to paint a vibrant and unruly picture of cultural rupture, exchange, and production in what he calls the “creole cities” of premodern Burma, Siam, and Manipur. He focuses especially on two groups of creole communities settled around the royal capitals of Upper Burma. The “Yodaya” were peasants, artisans, and experts taken captive from Ayutthaya (Siam) in 1767, and the “Kathe” were taken in raids against Manipur from the 1750s to the 1830s.
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