Creole Kingdoms in Southeast Asia: Slave-Gathering Warfare and Cultural Exchange in Burma, Siam, and Manipur

Examines the cultural consequences of slave-gathering warfare.

Long-distance slave-gathering warfare reshuffled the populations of mainland Southeast Asia between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this lightly populated region, people were power, and warfare between kingdoms was dedicated to the enslavement and forced relocation of defeated peoples. In the Southeast Asian context, war slaves were often valued and exploited for native talents and knowledge. In Upper Burma, for example, captured artisans, performers, pundits, weavers, and elephant trainers were made the king’s property and incorporated into a vast and tightly organized force of coerced laborers.

The enslaved became critical agents in the transmission of artistic practices, knowledge, religious beliefs, and exotic skills and talents. Using the concept of creolization as a conceptual anchor, Creole Kingdoms offers new insights into the many ways that war slaves and their descendants creatively built, popularized, and consolidated cultural practices across the cosmopolitan kingdoms of mainland Southeast Asia.

Creole Kingdoms opens up new terrain for both future generations of Southeast Asian scholars and general readers from the mainland who want to explore the cultural history of their home.