Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Depopulated Lanna area

At the group "Siamese Memories" on Facebook is a post about the Shan Rebellion in Phrae,
https://web.facebook.com/joel.j.barlow.7/posts/3988192744623264:61
and another about the Hmong
https://web.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10158692345412917&set=gm.4358196784245093
both of which I found interesting.
The Hmong as Mongolian? I doubt it! Hmong are also called Meo or Miao and go way back in Chinese history. If Mongolian and Hmong shamanism are related, as claimed, might that not be due to Bon religion from Tibet? Hmong people do not look Mongolian to me.
(I have a next door neighbor who is Hmong.)

I wrote about both matters in "Enticing Siam" and a Japanese friend had that stuff posted on the net for a decade or so, but due to difficulties transferring money to pay for his URL took it down, and I have left that book unavailable through the net. I still have about a hundred copies and there may well also be that many for sale at Wat Doi Suthep gift shop in Chiang Mai. For all I know there are also a few at Cabbages and Condoms, WiangPaPao, ChiangRai but they didn't respond when I wrote to ask.

Anyway, about depopulation of the Lanna area after a quarter millennia of Burmese rule here:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1067115/population-thailand-historical/
https://books.google.co.th/books?id=E18RBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA55-IA48&lpg=PA55-IA48&dq=population+of+the+Lanna+area+after+1800&source=bl&ots=zKQzkeobAk&sig=ACfU3U1EdUOtNrgDRvsA4EF1y_fDeq4Rng&hl=th&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwin1dfL-YTyAhX4zzgGHfcxAhMQ6AEwBnoECAsQAw#v=onepage&q=population%20of%20the%20Lanna%20area%20after%201800&f=false https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5019435596418232016/6111183645894188835
https://www.jstor.org/stable/189268
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2027479_2027486_2027498,00.html

ChiangMai City somehow maintained without great population loss. but the area now in Thailand and north of there was very sparcely populated at the time of Dr Briggs, with purportedly only 70 or so "dacoits" in Chiang Saen.
I would like to know about the population of Nan back then, and how that might have impacted on French seizure of some of its territory.