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Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Foreword -- Introductory Note to the 1964 Reprint -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Maps -- Diagrams -- PART I. THE PROBLEM AND ITS SETTING -- I. INTRODUCTION -- II. THE ECOLOGICAL BACKGROUND OF KACHIN SOCIETY -- III. THE CATEGORIES SHAN AND KACHIN AND THEIR SUB-DIVISIONS -- PART II. THE STRUCTURE OF KACHIN GUMSA SOCIETY -- IV. HPALANG-AN UNSTABLE KACHIN GUMSA COMMUNITY -- V. THE STRUCTURAL CATEGORIES OF KACHIN GUMSA SOCIETY -- I. Introduction -- II. Concepts of Territorial Division -- III. Concepts concerning Aggregates of Persons -- IV. Concepts of Affinal Relationship and Incest -- V. Concepts of Property and Ownership -- VI. Concepts of Rank and Class -- VII. Concepts of the Supernatural -- VIII. Concepts of Authority: Political and Religious Office -- PART III. STRUCTURAL VARIABILITY -- VI. GUMLAO AND GUMSA -- VII. GUMSA AND SHAN -- VIII. THE EVIDENCE FROM KACHIN HISTORY -- IX. MYTH AS A JUSTIFICATION FOR FACTION AND SOCIAL CHANGE -- X. CONCLUSION -- APPENDICES -- I. Some Documented Cases of Linguistic Change -- II. The Hpalang Feud as Officially Reported -- III. The Nature of Kachin 'Slavery' -- IV. Jinghpaw Kinship Terminology -- V. Estimate of 'Shan' and 'Kachin' Population in the Kachin Hills Area -- VI. Rainfall: Annual Precipitation in Inches -- VII. A Note on the Qualifications of the Author -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX.

The thesis underlying this essay may be summarized as follows: The modern European concepts frontier, state and nation are interdependent but they are not necessarily applicable to all state-like political organisations everywhere. In default of adequate documentary materials most historians of South-East Asia have tended to assume that the states with which they have to deal were Nation-States occupied by named "Peoples" and separated from each other by precise political frontiers. The inferences that have been made on the basis of these initial assumptions sometimes conflict with sociological common sense. It is not the anthropologist's task to write history, but if history is to be elaborated with the aid of inspired guesses then the special knowledge of the anthropologist becomes relevant so as to point up the probabilities.