The Art of Pretending to Govern: Claiming Sovereignty in Colonial Burma

The Wa region, which spans the border between Burma and China, seems like a typical place where highland dwellers have successfully resisted state domination. Borders remain porous and neighbouring states have manifestly failed to ‘climb the hills’. Yet, I argue, the literature on Zomian escapism fails to capture the state’s real intentions on the frontier. The British colonial government of Burma was not interested in Leviathan projects of administering or ‘seeing’ upland peoples. They wanted to claim the right of access to the rumoured mineral riches of the Wa hills, without the expense of subduing and administering the inhabitants. The colonial state responded to Wa people’s resistance in the late nineteenth century by claiming sovereignty while in practice retreating from the hills. The state used various techniques to pretend to govern the hills. By demarcating a ‘Line of Safety’ around the hills beyond which Europeans were not allowed to cross (as the murder of white people might draw international attention to the British lack of control over the Wa), and by declaring the area to be ‘British unadministered territory’ where normal laws did not apply, the state claimed sovereignty without actually controlling the hills. Peripheral situations like the Wa States were not anomalous, but instead crucial to how empires functioned. The surge in territorial annexations during the era of high imperialism saw European states making sovereign claims that were often more speculative than substantial. By pretending to govern the hills, the British freed up resources to govern directly elsewhere.