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Creating Marginality And Reconstructing Narrative: Reconfiguring Karen Social And Geo-Political Alignment, Barbara Verchot

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Pre-modern conceptualization of shifting borderlands and territories rather than fixed boundaries often allowed for the dynamic flow of peoples between polities. Until the late 1800s and the colonization of Burma in 1886 by the British Empire, this permeability of the borders of its territory was how Siam (currently Thailand) viewed its geo-political sphere (Thomson 1995:272). Britain extended the boundaries of its empire beyond India to guarantee the economic interests of the British Empire. With this push eastward, Siam abutted a polity that rejected the idea of shifting borderlands. The British ascribed to the modern concept of non-permeability of borders. This …