Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865-1915

Description

Over the course of the half century from 1865 to 1915, the British and Dutch delineated colonial spheres, in the process creating new frontiers. This book analyzes the development of these frontiers in Insular Southeast Asia as well as the accompanying smuggling activities of the opium traders, currency runners, and human traffickers who pierced such newly drawn borders with growing success. The book presents a history of the evolution of this 3000-km frontier, and then inquires into the smuggling of contraband: who smuggled and why, what routes were favored, and how effectively the British and Dutch were able to enforce their economic, moral, and political will. Examining the history of states and smugglers playing off one another within a hidden but powerful economy of forbidden cargoes, the book also offers new insights into the modern political economies of Southeast Asia. Contents A Note on Orthography and Usage Acknowledgments Abbreviations Chapter 1. Introduction Part I. Creating the Frontier: Border Formation and the State Section I. Building the Frontier Chapter 2. Mapping the Frontier Chapter 3. Enforcing the Frontier Chapter 4. Strengthening the Frontier Section II. Imagining the Frontier Chapter 5. The Specter of Violence Chapter 6. “Foreign Asians” on the Frontier Chapter 7. The Indigenous Threat Part II. Crossing the Frontier: Smuggling, Profit, and Resistance Section III. Secret Trades, Porous Borders Chapter 8. The Smuggling of Narcotics Chapter 9. Counterfeiters Across the Frontier Chapter 10. Illicit Human Cargoes Section IV. The Illegal Weapons Trade Across the Anglo/Dutch Frontier Chapter 11. Munitions and Borders: Arms in Context Chapter 12. Praxis and Evasion: Arms in Motion Section V. A Frontier Story: The Sorrows of Golam Merican Chapter 13. Contraband and the Junk Kim Ban An Chapter 14. Worlds of Illegality, 1873–99 Chapter 15. Conclusion Bibliography Index