China Studies Centre, The University of Sydney
1:00 pm to 2:30 pm (AEST), Monday 9 September 2019
Room 708, Level 7, Jane Foss Russell Building
The University of Sydney
This talk examines the hybrid legal practices that British colonial officials in Upper Burma and Chinese authorities in Yunnan province employed to settle disputes arising from cross-border crime in the Sino-Burmese borderlands. With the signing of the Minai Agreement in 1902, Qing and British officials held periodic meetings to jointly adjudicate legal disputes among the border populations. Although this practice survived the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and persisted until the late 1930s, the Chinese and the British had to regularly negotiate adjustments to their legal practices to adapt them to the changing nature of their rule. Indigenous responses to colonial conquest and state-building also played a pivotal role in the transformations that these legal practices underwent during the Republican period.
By drawing on British and Chinese archival sources, this talk shows how these legal practices reshaped the relationship between the border populations, state agents, and colonial officials. I argue that the Chinese and the British regarded these periodic meetings as a means of extending the reach of state institutions in the region and transforming collective identities among the local inhabitants. In addition, it enabled state and colonial officials to gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics behind local alliances and feuds. I also contend that this system provided the border inhabitants with the opportunity to advance their own political and economic interests by taking advantage of the rivalry between the Chinese and the British in the region.
This event is part of the lecture series ‘Borderlands in Chinese History and Archaeology’, co-presented throughout 2019 by the Department of History and the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney
About the Speaker
Dr Eric Vanden Bussche is an assistant professor at the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo. His research interests include comparative colonialism, borderlands, and the formation of national identities in East Asia. Dr. Vanden Bussche received his Ph.D. in East Asian History from Stanford University. Prior to joining the University of Tokyo, he taught at universities in the U.S. and China, including Stanford and Beijing University. He was also a visiting scholar at the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica in Taiwan. He co-edited Critical Han Studies: The History, Representation, and Identity of China’s Majority (University of California Press, 2012) and co-authored Baxi yu Zhongguo: Shijie Zhixu Biandongzhong de Shuangfang Guanxi (Beijing, 2001). His current research focuses on China’s border disputes and state-building along the Sino-Burmese borderlands.
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