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Frontier Tibet' addresses a historical sequence that sealed the future of the Sino-Tibetan borderlands. It considers how starting in the late nineteenth century imperial formations and emerging nation-states developed competing schemes of integration and debated about where the border between China and Tibet should be. It also ponders the ways in which this border is internalised today, creating within the People's Republic of China a space that retains some characteristics of a historical frontier. The region of eastern Tibet called Kham, the focus of this volume, is a productive lens through which processes of place-making and frontier dynamics can be analysed. Using historical records and ethnography, the authors challenge purely externalist approaches to convey a sense of Kham's own centrality and the agency of the actors involved. They contribute to a history from below that is relevant to the history of China and Tibet, and of comparative value for borderland studies

Frontier Tibet addresses a historical sequence that sealed the future of the Sino-Tibetan borderlands. It considers how starting in the late nineteenth century imperial formations and emerging nation-states developed competing schemes of integration and debated about where the border between China and Tibet should be. It also ponders the ways in which this border is internalised today, creating within the People's Republic of China a space that retains some characteristics of a historical frontier. The region of eastern Tibet called Kham, the focus of this volume, is a productive lens through which processes of place-making and frontier dynamics can be analysed. Using historical records and ethnography, the authors challenge purely externalist approaches to convey a sense of Kham's own centrality and the agency of the actors involved. They contribute to a history from below that is relevant to the history of China and Tibet, and of comparative value for borderland studies.

International audience ; This introductory chapter lays out the historical background and the conceptual framework that underlie the volume's collective effort to problematize the Kham region of eastern Tibet, and, more broadly, the Sino-Tibetan borderlands. It discusses conventional depictions of political, economic, and ideological topographies of these borderlands, and brings to the fore frontier dynamics that lead to a topological reconfiguration in which Kham appears neither simply distant nor proximate and neither outside nor inside, and where the distance between core/periphery and Sino/Tibetan, become distorted.

International audience ; This chronology provides a selection of major events of global and local significance: it foregrounds some key historical events to convey a sense of how eastern Tibet, and Kham in particular, has been shaped by various actors in conjunction with fluctuating political, economic, and cultural forces of different scales and intensity. 1 It focuses on the period from the mid-nineteenth century, during which Kham became a contentious zone, to the present. The first section of the chronology, however, starts in the seventeenth century because of the historical importance of this period and its relevance for later events.

International audience ; Southernmost Kham, which borders Burma and Yunnan Province, remained at the juncture of several mutually competing political centers until the first half of the twentieth century. On the fringes of Tibetan, Naxi, and Chinese expansion and increasing political control, several Tibeto-Burman­–speaking groups such as the Drung and Nung gradually became integrated into their neighbors' polities. Their political dependency often arose from trading with and accepting loans from commercial agents and from the intermediaries of local rulers, Naxi and Tibetans alike. This article addresses this practice of providing credit, which was developed at the expense of impoverished groups who were often obliged to accept the terms of the transaction. The author particularly emphasizes the connections between this system of debt dependency, the relationship between creditors and debtors that has to be considered in terms of exchange and reciprocity, and the question of political legitimacy. Within this broader context of regional interethnic relations, the article provides a detailed analysis of the concrete terms of the political relationship that existed between Drung communities and Tibetan chiefs of Tsawarong, which contributes to an understanding of the workings of this relationship and its economic, territorial, and even ritual components.

Southernmost Kham, which borders Burma and Yunnan Province, remained at the juncture of several mutually competing political centers until the first half of the twentieth century. On the fringes of Tibetan, Naxi, and Chinese expansion and increasing political control, several Tibeto-Burman­–speaking groups such as the Drung and Nung gradually became integrated into their neighbors' polities. Their political dependency often arose from trading with and accepting loans from commercial agents and from the intermediaries of local rulers, Naxi and Tibetans alike. This article addresses this practice of providing credit, which was developed at the expense of impoverished groups who were often obliged to accept the terms of the transaction. The author particularly emphasizes the connections between this system of debt dependency, the relationship between creditors and debtors that has to be considered in terms of exchange and reciprocity, and the question of political legitimacy. Within this broader context of regional interethnic relations, the article provides a detailed analysis of the concrete terms of the political relationship that existed between Drung communities and Tibetan chiefs of Tsawarong, which contributes to an understanding of the workings of this relationship and its economic, territorial, and even ritual components. Keywords: Tibet, Kham, Drung, Nung, Naxi, trade, debt, tax, legitimacy, ritual

The contributions in this issue focus on the period from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, when this "frontier Tibet" [Kham] formed a middle ground in which local communities, the central Tibetan government (Ganden Phodrang), the Chinese imperial government (Qing), and later the republican authorities negotiated means of accommodation and established new institutions and practices. Against this historical background, the articles address questions of economic history, cultural interchange, and political legitimation and contestation at critical historical junctures. They show in particular how historical developments in trade and commerce are interlaced with notions of wealth and value, and linked to political control and authority. Together they bring new, ethnographically oriented historical studies into the arena of theoretical approaches to borderlands and corridors of contact.

International audience Southernmost Kham, which borders Burma and Yunnan Province, remained at the juncture of several mutually competing political centers until the first half of the twentieth century. On the fringes of Tibetan, Naxi, and Chinese expansion and increasing political control, several Tibeto-Burman­–speaking groups such as the Drung and Nung gradually became integrated into their neighbors' polities. Their political dependency often arose from trading with and accepting loans from commercial agents and from the intermediaries of local rulers, Naxi and Tibetans alike. This article addresses this practice of providing credit, which was developed at the expense of impoverished groups who were often obliged to accept the terms of the transaction. The author particularly emphasizes the connections between this system of debt dependency, the relationship between creditors and debtors that has to be considered in terms of exchange and reciprocity, and the question of political legitimacy. Within this broader context of regional interethnic relations, the article provides a detailed analysis of the concrete terms of the political relationship that existed between Drung communities and Tibetan chiefs of Tsawarong, which contributes to an understanding of the workings of this relationship and its economic, territorial, and even ritual components.

International audience ; Among the Drung of Yunnan, the absence of any clearly identifiable territorial rituals calls into question the relationship between ancestrality, territory and political power within the framework of a common ritual goal : achieving fertility. This article presents an ethnographic description of two rituals associated with the notion of fertility—the ox sacrifice and the mountain cult—that used to coexist in Drung society. The links between these two rituals and their respective political implications are thus explored. While both rituals can be defined as fertility rituals, they each exhibit a different relationship to territory in its political acceptation. On the one hand, the ox sacrifice is exemplary of the dynamic and competitive characteristic of political relationships, linked to the notion of prestige, with no discernable spatial anchoring. On the other hand, the mountain cult exemplifies a strong territorial embedment that reveals the past hierarchical political structure within which the Drung people were infeoded to local Tibetan chiefs whom they considered the masters of the land. At yet another level, both fertility rituals convey a complex relationship to the territory understood as a communal space within which relationships between humans and spirits take place ; L'absence, chez les Drung du Yunnan, de rituels clairement identifiables comme rituels territoriaux implique de se questionner sur l'articulation entre l'ancestralité, le territoire et le pouvoir politique dans le cadre d'un objectif rituel commun : l'obtention de la fertilité. Après une description de deux pratiques rituelles liées à cette notion de fertilité, le sacrifice de bovins et le culte aux montagnes, telles qu'elles coexistaient autrefois chez les Drung, l'auteur questionne les liens entre ces deux pratiques et leurs implications politiques respectives. Si ces deux rituels peuvent se définir comme des cultes à la fertilité, ils manifestent cependant un rapport différent au territoire dans sa définition ...

26 p. ; Leach used the notion of "ritual language" in order to show that ritual acts are ways of "saying things," but also that this language is common to otherwise dissimilar groups and serves to express or validate social status. Drawing on this proposition, I investigate in an historical perspective the interethnic relationships between Drung, Nung, Naxi and Tibetan in northwest Yunnan. Pointing out some basic characteristic of their past political relations, I discuss the ritual/power/fertility complex in the broader eastern Himalayas, centering my analysis on the ritual slaughter of animals and the distribution of their flesh. In the process of partaking is expressed a more general model on which power relationships are articulated, between humans as well as between humans and some spirits. I argue that the notion of debt can help in characterizing the underlying structure of a ritual language common to the people inhabiting the Eastern Himalayas.