Secret Trade Permeating Borders: Smuggling and the State in Southeast Asia's Borderlands, 1865-1915 (utopia Translation Series 071)

About This Novel

From 1865 to 1915, Britain and the Netherlands divided their colonial scope in Southeast Asia and opened up new borders. However, this process has fueled a vast underground economic network composed of opium dealers, counterfeit currency smugglers, human traffickers and arms dealers. Smuggling activities are particularly active in border areas. Through an in-depth study of newspapers and magazines, travel diaries, judicial archives, historical images, ship logs, international treaties, and oral histories, Tagliacozzo demonstrates the fierce battle between the ruling forces and smugglers on the border during the formation of the Anglo-Dutch colonial state. In order to consolidate their rule, the colonial government explored, delineated and enforced its territorial boundaries, and sought to strengthen the monitoring and crackdown on smuggling activities with the help of technological innovations in surveying, mapping, communications, hydrology, transportation, medicine, law and the military. However, smuggling was not an isolated phenomenon, but a common means of resistance; smugglers did not come from a single social class or ethnic group, but included people from different backgrounds inside and outside the colonies. They continued to challenge the authority of the colonial empire by using local knowledge, dispersed populations, corrupt officials, and even imitating some of the country's technological means. In the process, the boundaries between ordinary people, legal traders, smugglers and pirates have become increasingly blurred, and the relationships between legal and illegal activities, colonizers and colonized people have also become complex. To this day, smuggling is still a part of border life in some Southeast Asian countries, and the game between smugglers and countries continues. Although borders are often tightly controlled, there are always attempts to breach restrictions. Because the pursuit of power, morality and interests never stops.

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